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That Farm 

RECOUNTING THE ADVENTURES OF A 

DRY -GOODS MERCHANT WHO WENT 

BACK TO THE LAND 



Illustrated from photographs 



BY 

HARRISON WHITTINGHAM 




DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

I9I4 






Copyright, 1912, 1Q13, IQ14, hy 
Doubled AY, Page & Company 

All rights reserved, including that of 

translation into foreign languages, 

including the Scandinavian 



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CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

^ I. In which I encounter the farm real 
^ estate man and lease a vaca- 
^ tion home 3 

II. In which the lease is extended and 

actual farming operations begun 14 

III. In which I become convinced that 

I must buy the farm .... 23 

IV. In which I close the deal and start 

farming operations in earnest . 33 

V. In which building operations and 
hog cholera claim attention, and 
we decide to make the farm our 
headquarters 42 

VI. In which old Layton tells a horse 
story, and I become my own 
farm boss and engage Waters 56 

VII. In which spring plowing and 
planting, the help problem, 
horses, and water supply absorb 
my* attention 65 

VIII. In which I declare my indepen- 
dence as a dairyman, and Mrs. 
Whittingham catches the gar- 
dening fever 76 



vi 

CHAPTBS 

IX. 



X. 

XL 

XII. 

XIIL 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



XIV. 



XV. 



XVI. 



XVII. 
XVIII. 



In which the fight on the milk trust 
is waged and won 85 

In which I indulge in digressions 
and personalities .... 97 

In which an old mill is rehabilitated 
and a truck garden developed 103 

In which I consider the hen, while 
Cupid steals into our kitchen . 1 16 

In which I come to know Tom 
Stevens and Ben Highland bet- 
ter, and get the farm on a paying 
basis 125 

In which my son Junior introduces 
us to a new industry — dogs; 
and in which the angels of birth 
and death visit the farm . 



In which we become acquainted 
with the farmer's bane — sum- 
mer drought — and Junior be- 
comes a member of the firm . 

In which I become interested in 
turkeys, and the hog business, 
under Junior's guidance, begins 
to pay 

In which the vegetable garden and 
dairy make progress .... 

In which I record the more impor- 
tant events of a successful year, 
and append a balance sheet . 



143 



159 



175 



183 



194 



CONTENTS vii 

CHAPTE* PAGE 

XIX. In which I take stock of my failures 
and successes, and arrive at a few 
conclusions on business farming 210 

XX. In which I light a cigar on the ver- 
anda and philosophize . . . 225 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The old mill was at first only a picturesque 
feature Frontispiece ^ 

tKCSXVi PAGE 

The Holsteins. There is a certain satisfac- 
tion in raising thoroughbreds . . . . 38 ^ 

The hennery is 150 feet long and 15 feet wide 42 " 

A corner of the cattle barn, showing the 

swinging stanchions 52 t/" 

The retail milk delivery wagon .... 92 ^ 

Weber's garden was laid out so that it 
might be tended largely by horse instead 
of hand labor 108 

The contract for the corn husking was 
given to one man 130 

Seven beautiful puppies — the beginning of 

the kennel 206 i/' 

The hog industry is Junior's pet hobby . 206 



That Farm J ^ 



THAT FARM 



CHAPTER I 

IN WHICH I ENCOUNTER THE FARM REAL ESTATE 
MAN AND LEASE A VACATION HOME 

DURING the past ten or twelve years tlie 
critics among my friends have been grad- 
ually won over to my way of thinking on the 
general proposition, "Can a city man become a suc- 
cessful farmer?" But I still differ from them on a 
point of comparative values. To me the extra- 
ordinary thing is that, with my vast ignorance of 
matters agricultural — and 1 am just beginning to 
realize the vastness of it — I have actually been 
able to make things grow and to wrest a net profit 
from the willing but misused soil. To my friends, 
most of whom are still hunched up before roll-top 
desks, fatuously supposing that they are engaged 
in something important, the wonder is that a hu- 
man being should exist with a mind so bizarre that 
he could give up a perfectly good dry-goods busi- 
ness in a thriving city for the sake of spending his 
mature years among the sun-scorched cornfields 
and the unclean cows of an up-state farm, and. 



THAT FARM 

with luck so phenomenal as to enable him to "get 
away with the whole thing." 

If I agreed with my friends on this point, I 
should now devote my pen-play to the task of ex- 
pressing the philosophy of the situation. 1 should 
explain that the longing for the soil was probably 
bred in my bones, that some guardian angel had 
led me through the mazes of a business career and 
kept my heart true to the impulses of youth — 
and I should doubtless bore you to death. 

But since I am convinced that the things worth 
telling about are the methods by which I have 
achieved a moderate measure of practical success, I 
shall keep my feet planted on the solid earth and 
will try to set forth those things that would have 
been most valuable to me a few years ago. 

It is perhaps necessary to add that I am that 
converted merchant whom my friends still mar- 
vel over. I did give up a lucrative business, and I 
did it with my eyes open. A few decades of ex- 
perience had knocked some of the rashness of youth 
out of me, and I did the thing advisedly and in 
cold blood. I believed that it was the best thing 
for my wife and myself, and deep down in my heart 
I knew I could make a business success of it. 

However, this was not the sudden jump that it 
sounds. It took several years for me to come 
around to this point of view, and perhaps a brief 



. THAT FARM 

tracing of the steps may serve to remove the mys- 
tery from what my friends still consider an extra- 
ordinary act. 

Behold me, then, Harrison Whittingham, head 
of the Melvin & Whittingham Dry-Goods Com- 
pany, with an average income of something more 
than $30,000 a year, and a bit laid by; vice-presi- 
dent of the Board of Trade and a charter member 
of the City Club; owner of a substantial stone 
house and stable on Centre Street; well established 
in the community, and apparently fixed for life; a 
man whose birthdays had long since become days 
of reflection instead of celebration, but still sound 
in mind and body. 

Most insidiously did the rural serpent enter 
this most respectable and well-established urban 
Eden. It was fifteen years ago, and it all came 
about because of the annual annoyance of solving 
the summer problem. In desperation I came 
up here and rented this farm as a half-hearted ex- 
periment. 

The vacation question is a terrible bore to the 
average business man with a family. Summer 
hotels, no matter where they are, lack the free- 
dom and comfort of home — the home feeling, in 
other words, which is the most restful influence 
in the world. The furnished cottage is, as a rule, 
such only in name, for one must move a carload 

S 



THAT FARM 

of furniture out from the city to make the cot- 
tage habitable. I knew the disadvantages of all 
of these before I finally hit upon the farm idea. 
In discussing the subject with my wife we con- 
cluded that there were, at least, possibilities in the 
country, so in the early spring 1 began to look 
around for a place to spend the following summer. 
I started with the real estate agents, and I don't 
think there is another line of business, except, 
perhaps, life insurance, that can boast of such per- 
sistently energetic representatives. My office be- 
came a magnet for them, and each day's mail 
brought descriptions of farms in every section of 
the country, and I read every one of them. New 
England estates highly improved, and others that 
needed a little doing over; Florida fruit lands, 
Texas cattle ranches, and Virginia estates with 
their alluvial James River bottom lands and their 
romantic antebellum history of which I never 
tire of reading; Mississippi Valley farms, bargains 
in grain farms out through Minnesota and the 
Dakotas, and the virgin land in the wonderful 
Canadian Northwest; apple growing in Oregon was 
held up before me with all its glittering possibilities, 
and for two hours one day a most active and inter- 
esting tongue led me through the sunshine and the 
roses and the Spanish Missions of California and off 
into the Imperial Valley to El Centro, where they 

6 



THAT FARM 

Irrigate and make the desert bloom, and where 
my old friend Allen Kelly preaches industry and 
progress through his newspaper to the indolent 
ones there on the edge of Mexico. It was all in- 
teresting in a way because it served to push my 
horizon back beyond the Hudson, and I was re- 
minded once more that the constructive part of 
the United States stretches away in three direc- 
tions from America's greatest port of entry. 

But 1 was tethered to my business, in a way; so 
out of the mass of farm descriptions I saved only 
those that were within a couple of hours of my city 
desk, and to many of them I made fruitless pil- 
grimages in search of something to suit me. 

If at the termination of human events there is to 
be required of us in another world an explanation 
of our earthly acts I tremble for the real estate 
man when he undertakes to bridge that awful gulf 
between his printed and illustrated description of 
a farm and the actual property itself. Into his 
written statements distorted and misleading sen- 
tences will find their way just as cotton threads 
will sometimes creep into "all silk" material, but 
the pictures — how is the camera made to tell such 
unnatural stories! 

One place in particular cemented itself to my 
memory, and time beyond all the generosity of 
hope could never destroy the impression it made 

7 



THAT FARM 

upon me. It was down on Long Island and was "A 
Gentleman's Country Estate." (I am speaking 
of the printed description, of course.) The manor- 
house, rich in master's bedrooms and baths, rested 
like an architectural diamond in a setting of beau- 
tiful shrubbery. The picture, I recall, was a little 
out of focus and the effect was soft and artistic. 
I journeyed fifty miles to nibble at that bait, and 
as many miles back steeped in anger and regret. 
Perhaps at one time it had been a "gentleman's 
country estate," but when I saw it the halls that 
had once housed that august scion of elegance and 
refinement were warped and worn. The place be- 
longed to a lady who occupied it in all its irrepar- 
able decay. The roof was sagged and, in spots, 
unshingled against the elements. Windows and 
doors were out of plumb and the stone flooring on 
the veranda reminded one of the ancient ways in 
the Alhambra. Two Muscovy ducks splashed 
about in a little lake near the house that was al- 
most hidden in its growth of lily pads, and by an 
unweeded pathway that led to an overgrown gar- 
den a stone figure of Pan, minus his flute, clung 
tenaciously to his crumbling pedestal. Because 
of good material and the honesty of builders in 
other days the barn still stood, but out through its 
holey roof one got an unobstructed view up toward 
his Maker. A lone pigeon flew across the haymow 

8 



THAT FARM 

and disappeared through a sashless window, and 
downstairs in one of the box stalls a knee-sprung 
ginny mule dozed and fanned flies. There were 
115 acres of that wind-swept wilderness of sand, 
and the price of it was $20,000. 

One day an industrious agent who had brought 
to my attention some twenty-odd of the seventy- 
five farms I had inspected, wrote me a most al- 
luring description of a farm that he thought would 
just suit me. It was the first week in May when 
my wife and I went to look at the property. The 
village impressed us very favorably when we 
alighted from the train; it was clean and comfort- 
able-looking and set in the most attractive, rolling 
country 800 feet above the sea. We drove three 
miles out from the village to the farm, but we did 
not go beyond the entrance to the place — the first 
impression was enough. Spring had worked its 
beautiful May coloring into everything else, but 
the brush had skipped on that particular spot. 
My wife and I looked hopelessly at each other, for 
we had reached a verdict. 

The local real estate man drove us back to the 
town over another road in order to show us a little 
more of the country. About a mile and a half 
from the village we came upon a rather attractive 
place on the right of the turnpike. The unten- 
anted house with its tightly closed blinds stood 

9 



THAT FARM 

among the trees as though ashamed of the neglect 
it was suffering. We stopped in front of the gate- 
way and I asked about the property. Our guide 
informed us that it was hard to tell who the prop- 
erty belonged to, for it changed hands so often; 
the caretaker, however, would show us about if 
we cared to see it; so we drove in. The place, we 
learned, was owned by a wholesale coffee merchant 
in the city, who would probably be glad to get some 
income from it in the form of monthly rental, for the 
coffee business was none too good just then. 

There were 400 acres in the farm, nearly all 
cleared and arable; 300 acres, with the residence 
and outbuildings, on the east side of the highway, 
and 100 acres on the west. The outbuildings 
consisted of a cattle barn 145 feet long with 
accommodations for seventy head of stock and 
storage room for 300 tons of hay; a horse barn 
containing twenty box stalls, ten standing stalls, 
harness room, carriage room, etc.; chicken house, 
piggery, tool house, corncrib, blacksmith shop, and 
three tenant houses. On the lOO-acre tract a grist 
mill stood by the side of a stream that ran through 
the entire length of the property. 

A great deal of money had undoubtedly been 
spent in the improvements, for they were more 
elaborate than one usually finds on a farm. The 
eaves of the colonial roofs on the barns, for ex- 

10 



THAT FARM 

ample, were supported by ornamental wooden 
braces, and each of the three cupolas was sur- 
mounted by a handsome weather vane. Absence 
of paint was the worst affliction the buildings suf- 
fered from, but that had manifested itself only 
in spots; the foundations and sills were all in 
very good condition. Of course the general neg- 
lect cast a somewhat gloomy light over everything, 
but it was, nevertheless, by no means an unat- 
tractive farm. 

The caretaker was an old man who had served 
in different capacities on the place since the build- 
ings were erected — in fact, he had assisted in build- 
ing them. Time had developed in him a sort of 
feeling of ownership for the property, and he was 
inclined to regard our visit as an intrusion until 
we came to inspect the residence; then his reticence 
disappeared. He pointed with pride to the corner- 
stone which he had helped to set in place; in the 
stone were cut the initials "J. H. B., 1874." James 
H. Bellair had built the house at a cost of ^50,000, 
so the old man informed us as he fumbled with the 
big brass key in the front door. The house was 
attractive in a way, but hardly the style of archi- 
tecture that one would choose nowadays for a 
country dwelling; nevertheless, finding such a 
house on a property, there are few who would tear 
it down simply to exhibit in a new one their own 

II 



THAT FARM 

peculiar ideas, more or less practical, of a summer 
home. 

The walls were brick-filled and stood upon a 
splendid foundation around a cellar under the entire 
house. The main hallway, 20 feet wide, was 
floored with alternate squares of gray and white 
marble. A broad stairway rising from the centre 
of the far end, and divided at a landing, destroyed 
the suggestion of the conventional, useless hallway. 
The inside trim throughout was black walnut, 
which seemed terribly sombre at first, but even as 
we walked about the house it grew on us. On the 
left of the hallway was a large room the entire 
length of the house; this, the old fellow informed 
us, was originally the "picture gallery, and it had 
the finest paintings you ever seen all over the 
walls." We saw some of the paintings later, in 
the village hotel parlor, where they had found their 
way after Mr. James H. Bellair's demise; they were 
"buckeyes." A^buckeye.?" Well, when an impa- 
tient landlord or an annoying appetite steps in be- 
tween an artist and his canvas at a time when the 
studio exchequer resembles Mother Hubbard's little 
cabinet, the artist will frequently dash ofi" an "Alpine 
Scene" or a "Cornfield Vista in the Afternoon Glow 
of an Autumnal Sunset" and convert theeff'ortat 
once into cash sufficient for his immediate needs; 
such works of art are known as "buckeyes." 

12 



THAT FARM 

On the right of the hallway was the parlor, back 
of that the library, then the dining-room, which 
was separated from the kitchen by a butler's pan- 
try, and grocery and china closets. On the second 
floor there were eight bedrooms and three in the 
servants' quarters. The interior of the house was 
in fairly good condition; the outside, however, 
needed considerable repairing and painting, but 
with the memory of the other places I had visited 
fresh in my mind, I determined to try to rent this 
one. I left the matter in the hands of the real 
estate agent, and we returned to the city. The 
following week I received word from him that the 
farm could be had for $ioo a month; after some 
dickering I leased the place for one year at $80 
per month. 



U$ 



CHAPTER II 

IN WHICH THE LEASE IS EXTENDED AND ACTUAL 
FARMING OPERATIONS BEGUN 

IT IS an unusual thing for a city man in quest of 
a summer home for himself and family to lease 
a 400-acre farm for a year, so by way of ex- 
planation let me say that for a long time the farm 
idea had been in my mind. 

I was one of those city men who wanted to go to 
the country and start farming, but my ideas dif- 
fered in some respects from theirs. The "sum- 
mer home" feature of it was only the first step in 
the direction I had been inclining for years. I 
had four growing boys whose welfare, naturally, 
was of the greatest importance to me, and I believed 
that a few months spent in the country each year 
would add very materially to their education as well 
as to their health. Professors and text books train 
a young man's mind, it is true, but farm life is 
the foundation of a peculiarly healthy viewpoint. 
But in addition to that, farming had always 
meant something more to me. I looked upon it 

14 



THAT FARM 

as a business filled with tremendous possibilities, 
and in theory T had carefully worked out plans for 
their development. Many of my friends had 
farms, large and small, but almost without excep- 
tion their places were veritable graveyards for 
dollars. The soil seemed to produce fairly good 
crops of all kinds, but some strange force operated 
most industriously and effectively against net 
profit. That was the problem that had always 
puzzled me, and after years of broken promises to 
myself I at last made up my mind to try to solve it. 

Being almost entirely a *'book farmer," I soon 
learned that a very necessary part of my early 
agricultural education was a course in the mistakes 
of so-called "practical farmers" and **city farmers." 
Like most of the latter class, when they commence 
farming, I believed that the farm would supply 
my city house with milk, butter, eggs, vegetables, 
fruits, broilers, delicious country sausage (I haven't 
the heart to go any farther down the list), etc. In 
theory it was a brilliant conception, but in practice 
— well, just scratch off everything but one barrel 
of potatoes and six well-matured "broilers." 

But, after all, this is to be a history of the work- 
ing of my farm, of its failures and its successes, 
without any alphabetical arrangement of either; 
I shall write of my experiences just as they oc- 
curred. 

IS 



THAT FARM 

To begin with, I hired an overseer possessed of a 
multitude of virtues and a wife, to guide the agri- 
cultural end of the farm; they established them- 
selves in the best of the three tenant houses. Two 
farm hands were employed to assist him. The 
old caretaker remained undisturbed in his posi- 
tion. They were apparently good men and in- 
dustrious, for the place was in very presentable 
shape when we moved up in June. It is remark- 
able what effect the combination of energy and a 
few implements has upon a neglected place — it 
is like brushing a boy's tangled hair. 

1 bought cattle and poultry to supply our needs, 
and two teams of horses for the farm work. The 
carriage horses I brought up from the Centre 
Street stable. The season was too far advanced 
to undertake much farming; in July, however, we 
cut about fifty tons of hay. But, after all, we were 
not there for that purpose. We were experiment- 
ing, primarily, to find out if those acres held the 
secret of summer happiness; if they did not, then 
another summer, so far as we were concerned, would 
find the tottering old caretaker reigning supreme 
once more in the midst of his memories and weeds. 

To undertake to set down here a detailed ac- 
count of our summer's experience on the farm would 
require too much space, and it would be a digres- 
sion from my original purpose. I will say, how- 

l6 



THAT FARM 

ever, that If there was a single flaw in the whole 
scheme 1 have yet to find it out. Our sun-tanned, 
voracious boys were sufficient endorsement of the 
step we had taken. 

Of course, it was a new experience for us all and 
another year might find the novelty somewhat worn 
off and the enthusiasm less riotous, particularly 
with the boys. After our return to the city in 
October, however, my wife and I, after a thorough 
analysis of the summer's experiment, concluded 
we had made no mistake. During my early years 
of theoretical farming in my library I doubt if my 
wife was very much in sympathy with me; if she 
was she carefully concealed it; but toward the 
last she seemed to have become infected in a small 
way with the enthusiasm that had worked so 
thoroughly into my system. To the average city 
woman the social position of a farmer's wife is not 
an enviable one. They see her as Millet pictured 
her in "The Gleaners," or, perhaps, as a "Maud 
Muller," bare ankled in a hot timothy field, tor- 
tured by bumblebees and work. As a rule they 
fail to appreciate the other side of it until they 
try it. 

In this farm in the foothills we had apparently 
found an ideal summering place, so I turned my 
attention to the farming side of it. The first ob- 
stacle was the one-year lease; it might limit the 

17 



THAT FARM . 

duration of the blissful state we had enjoyed, and 
at all events it seriously hampered farm projects. 
This latter feature particularly annoyed me, for I 
had already found my plans running over the edge 
of a year; so in December, under the persuasive in- 
fluence of a little added rent, I succeeded in hav- 
ing the original lease cancelled and a new one 
drawn for five years. That placed me in a position 
to carry out some of the plans I had in mind re- 
garding the working of the farm. 

From 400 acres I could reasonably expect to get 
sufhcient grain and fodder to support quite a num- 
ber of live stock, so I sold the three cows that 
were on the place and bought eleven thorough- 
bred Holsteins — ten cows and a bull. The milk 
could be sold to the factory in the village at a price 
that would pay the cost of production; then such 
of the increase in the stock as I did not hold for 
breeding purposes could be sold for a good price 
and would be net profit. I bought eight Berkshire 
sows due to farrow in March and April, 200 Leghorn 
chickens, and another team of work horses. This 
comprised our live stock equipment when we com- 
menced in March to work a living for them out of 
the soil. 

I moved the family up in May and it seemed 
like a homecoming to us all. During the pre- 
vious summer we became pretty well acquainted 

18 



THAT FARM 

with the village and its people, and when we re- 
turned, the better part of a forenoon was spent in 
renewing friendships of the year before. Village 
folk, I have noticed, are not given to placing ob- 
stacles in the way of friendship; they rather invite 
it. Such social lines as they have in Charleston, 
or in the Back Bay District, are not stretched 
about for the townspeople to trip over, and the 
countryman's standard of "blue blood" is in the 
tint of its red. The town prospered on its democ- 
racy and it was progressive, even to the extent of 
a country club. 

That country club, by the way, was one of the 
chief attractions of the town. Everybody be- 
longed to it; initiation fee $5 and annual dues 
$5 more. The clubhouse stood on a hilltop com- 
manding a view that any club in the world might 
well be proud of. The record for the nine-hole 
golf course was held by the village baker; he was 
too knock-kneed to hope for proficiency in any 
other line of sport, but he could certainly play golf 
— and make good huckleberry pies. On Saturday 
afternoons the village matrons would assemble on 
the clubhouse veranda, each with a little fancy 
work or some darning, and spend a few delightful 
hours plying their needles and gossiping; of course 
such a small town could not furnish enough mater- 
ial during the week for a whole afternoon's gos- 

19 



THAT FARM 

sip, so the needle work helped over the little 
depressions in conversation very nicely. 

I said everybody belonged to the club, but that 
was not entirely correct. There was one man in 
the town who found no breath of welcome there. 
He had basked in the enjoyment of membership 
at one time, but whether or not his resignation had 
been voluntary I never knew. He was pro- 
prietor of an amusement palace in the village — 
a sort of department store of happiness. There 
were pool, billiards, bowling (and some said even 
cards) for the entertainment of those seeking di- 
version, and countless thirst-destroying libations 
for arid throats. The place, naturally, came to 
be looked upon with disfavor by the women of the 
town whose sons wasted their nights there, and the 
proprietor became intensely unpopular. One Sat- 
urday afternoon he chanced upon the clubhouse 
veranda while the sewing ring was in session, and 
he was put on trial by the ladies. Each one took 
a hack at him, and finally Mrs. Mayer, the 
butcher's wife, who had two sons, and, therefore, 
compound wrath, summed up in substance to the 
effect that the cafe king was sorely lacking in 
honor and decency, and his morals were rotten. 
At that point in the performance he looked smil- 
ingly around the irate circle and said: ** Where 
the carrion is there the vultures will gather." As 

20 



THAT FARM 

I said, there Is no authentic record of the circum- 
stances surrounding his resignation from the club. 

When we moved up in the spring there were 
ninety-five acres seeded down — fifty in corn, 
thirty-five in oats, and ten in wheat. Seven hun- 
dred pounds of commercial fertilizer to the acre 
was drilled in with the corn. We pastured one 
of the meadows and our hay crop was less than the 
previous year. About the middle of August the 
threshing machine paid a visit to our oat field; 
from the thirty-five acres we got 700 bushels of 
oats. Not so bad, my overseer informed me, con- 
sidering the condition of the land. He seemed to 
feel that after he had become better acquainted 
with the land, the crops would be materially in- 
creased. This was reasonable enough. He was 
hired for that purpose and I did not propose to 
interfere with the working of his practical mind 
by offering theoretical suggestions, although at 
times I almost had the temerity to do so. 

The home feature of the farm was working so 
beautifully that I determined to give the com- 
mercial side ample time to get into shape. What 
matter if the "Harrison Whittingham Farm Ac- 
count'' showed a debit balance.^ It would be 
wiped out very soon by revenue from the stock 
and crops; it was counterbalanced already by the 
pleasure the farm had afforded us. Little wonder, 

21 



THAT FARM 

I thought, in a life so comfortable and independent, 
that the farmer's brain cultivates no appreciation 
of systematic economies. 

I did not then appreciate how much I took for 
granted. In my city business I took nothing on 
trust; I had to have actual facts and detail figures; 
and I wonder, now that I look back on it, just why 
I thought that "general impressions" were safe to 
work on in farming and not in dry-goods. 



22 



CHAPTER III 

IN WHICH I BECOME CONVINCED THAT I MUST BUY 

THE FARM 

THE attitude of the farm owner toward his 
tenant is peculiar: in most instances the 
landlord seems to feel that his one obliga- 
tion is to collect the rent. Against the possibility 
of having to make necessary repairs he will insert 
in the lease a clause providing for the tenant to do 
such work as may be required at his own expense, 
if he wants it done at all. Tenants do not, as a 
rule, find repairs necessary under these conditions, 
and the result is that both parties to the contract 
suffer. It would be far better for our farms, and 
for owners and renters, if the question of upkeep 
were given the consideration that it deserves, and 
the matter of repairs definitely provided for in the 
lease. 

There are certain obligations imposed upon a 
tenant regarding the payment of rent, and, some- 
times, a weak-kneed reference to repairs, which is 
always ignored, but the one feeble effort to pro- 

23 



THAT FARM 

tect the farm, to keep some life in the soil, is con- 
tained in a clause forbidding the removal of 
manure from the property. How much better it 
would be to have farm leases drawn by competent 
farmers, leases wherein the tenant would be com- 
pelled to pursue intelligent methods in the con- 
duct of his business, rotate his crops, and fertil- 
ize properly. It would be no hardship for the 
tenant; in reality he would profit by it, and at the 
expiration of the lease the owner of the property 
would have something more than an exhausted 
piece of land and some dilapidated improvements. 
City landlords do not abandon improved real 
estate to tenants in consideration of so much ren- 
tal; why should farm owners do it? 

The theory that it is cheaper to rent a farm than 
to own it is all wrong. Of course, based upon a 
comparison of rental with interest on investment 
there is some foundation for the belief, but that is 
a very poor way to commence practising economy 
In agriculture. In the business of farming, as 
much as in any other, the first essential to success 
Is an efficient working plant — that is, highly pro- 
ductive soil and practical equipment. Most rent- 
able farms contain neither of these requirements 
and tenants do not strive to put them there, 
whereas on a man's own property his work is all 
done with the idea of permanent betterment. The 

24 



THAT FARM 

first year or two may not be apparently profitable 
ones, but in the end how much better off he is than 
his neighbor who farms for to-day's crop without 
any idea of to-morrow's. Just run down the mental 
list of farms you have seen and compare those 
worked by tenants with those operated by owners. 

During my two years' occupancy of the farm 
under the new lease I had, at my own expense, 
painted the residence and done considerably more 
repairing about the property than I probably 
would have done had I taken the place solely as 
a bread-and-butter proposition. There were a 
great many alterations and additions necessary, 
however, and, although my lease had three years 
yet to run, I hesitated about making them. To re- 
pair fences was one thing, but to put up new ones 
was quite another. The dairy room was by no 
means up to my ideas of sanitation; the hennery 
was impractical and inadequate; the equipment 
of the cattle barn was serviceable in a way, but 
not at all in keeping with up-to-date ideas. In 
fact, I began to realize that a great portion of the 
plant was susceptible of improvements that would 
facilitate the working and economy of the business. 

As I look back upon those days I recall my feel- 
ings at the time. The plans I had so carefully laid 
and in which I had a confidence that had grown 
into conviction were being rudely altered by act- 

^5 



THAT FARM 

ual conditions as I came face to face with them. 
Perhaps at that point I might have been tempted 
to abandon the very purpose for which I had come 
into the country, to cast aside my theories and be- 
liefs and join the ranks of those who farm for fun, 
charging the cost, as we do with that of our wine 
and cigars, to a sort of ** Necessary Ignorance 
Account." Perhaps, after all, every other city 
man who has started farming has felt as I did be- 
fore taking the step, and, like the one who imagines 
he has a system to beat the game at Monte Carlo, 
finds enlightenment only in actual play. But I 
had come to learn, and if I found that farm failures 
were due to ungovernable circumstances I would, 
at least, have accomplished something. The re- 
sults of the farm work had not come up to my 
expectations, and I was satisfied that the reason for 
it lay In the management. My idea of farm possi- 
bilities was not changed, but the importance of 
farm management was rapidly growing on me. 
My early impression had been that farming con- 
sisted of one part farmer and about nine parts na- 
ture, but I began to see that my ratio was wrong. 
Dilapidated fences, an unsanitary dairy, an im- 
practical hennery, etc., etc., were no part of good 
management, yet I was undertaking to conduct 
the business successfully in the face of It. 

I was walking about the place one evening, 

26 



THAT FARM 

thinking matters over, when I met the old care- 
taker returning from his usual round of the build- 
ings. Just when his position as watchman began 
I never knew. Perhaps it dated from the begin- 
ning, but he stuck to it religiously, and each even- 
ing with unerring regularity he went through all of 
the buildings and inspected everything before 
smoking his last pipe of tobacco in the twilight on 
the little porch in front of his cottage. I had taken 
quite a fancy to old Layton Davidson. He was 
naturally an original and interesting character, and 
had seen a lot of the world in his day and acquired 
considerable knowledge in the school of diversified 
experience. His opinions were generally worth lis- 
tening to. In the course of our conversation I said : 

''Layton, what is your opinion of farming as a 
business?" 

"Well," he replied, "there ain't a heap of money 
in it nowadays, because land's so poor. Where a 
man owns his own farm and works it hisself there's 
a tolerable good living in it, but when he pays rent 
and hires a lot o' help, same as you do, and don't 
come on the place 'ceptin' in summer, why, he's 
bound to do same as all of 'em have done right here 
on this farm — stay for a while, then move away." 

"But," I explained, "I have a business in the 
city that requires only part of my time, so what is 
to prevent me from running this farm also.^" 

27 



THAT FARM 

"They've tried that here. After Mr. Bellair 
died, Mr. Baker had the place, then a lawyer named 
Ford bought it; they used to go to the city morn- 
ings and come out nights, but somehow or other 
they seemed to lose money at both ends while they 
were riding back and forth on the train." 

There was a lot of wisdom in what old Layton 
said, although I differed with him in some particu- 
lars. "Poor land" I considered no more excuse 
for failure on a farm than a leaky roof would be on 
a boot and shoe factory, and "hiring a lot o' help" 
I thought necessary where there was work to be 
done — and there is plenty of it on a farm. But 
"where a man owns his own farm and works it 
hisself " — there was the secret of success in a nut- 
shell. I had weighed too lightly the importance 
of the business side of agriculture, but I was rapidly 
awakening to an appreciation of the necessity of it. 
My short experience had convinced me that it was 
an occupation made up of a great number of de- 
tails, each bearing important relation to the other. 
How little it differed, after all, in the process of 
operation from the very dry-goods business in 
which I was engaged! The meadows, cornfields, 
poultry plant, and dairy occupied the same rela- 
tive positions on the farm that the notion, dress- 
goods, and millinery departments bore in my city 
business, each separate and distinct, but dove- 

28 



THAT FARM 

tailed one Into the other and contributing to the 
general welfare of the enterprise. There was this 
difference, however: the farm produced, while the 
city plant was only a distributing agency. The 
meadows, cornfields, dairy, etc., were factories as 
well as salesrooms, and everything that passed out 
of the farm gateway to be sold was a necessity of 
life. Hard work and plenty of it, long hours and 
careful application, an untiring war against ob- 
stacles, all these had entered into the upbuilding of 
a successful dry-goods business, and I was con- 
vinced that they were to be just as essential In the 
creation of a practical farm. 

There was only one solution of the problem and 
that was to buy the farm, or at all events that was 
what I successfully tried to convince myself, be- 
cause I wanted the place, so I concluded to take up 
the question of purchase at the first opportunity. 
It was a big step, I realized — bigger than any I 
had ever taken before. It meant the investment 
not only of money but of life interest In the soil. 
It meant the sundering of the first of the old city 
ties. I had no doubt that my friends would think 
me a fool, but pigs and potatoes were fast becom- 
ing more important to me than dry-goods. 

I paid my rent every three months to the real 
estate agent in the village; In fact, I had never seen 
the owner of the property. When the rent for the 

29 



THAT FARM 

September quarter fell due I called at the real 
estate man's office Instead of mailing the check, for 
I wanted to find out something about the possi- 
bility of acquiring the place. 

Following an ancient custom that Is still reli- 
giously observed by real estate men, particularly 
in the rural districts, that good man gave me an 
elaborate detailed history of the property before 
getting to the point in which I was interested. 
Mr. James H. Bellair, It appeared, had been given 
to "kicking over the traces" in the city, so his 
father bought the farm and established his son 
there, hoping to tone him down. The experiment 
did not work out, however, as the elder Bellair had 
hoped. The son soon had the twenty box stalls 
filled with horses with "marks," and the Saturday 
matinee races grew very popular. The young man's 
exuberance of spirit disturbed the traditions and 
the sleep of the villagers, and his dinners at 
"Peaceable Hill," which was the name he gave his 
farm, left no remembrances to harmonize with the 
name. The toning down was finally accomplished 
by the local undertaker. Through tragedies and 
romances and comedies I sat a patient listener, 
only to find out in the end that the real estate man 
could not give me the Information I was after. 

Through my agent in the city I found out that 
the coflfee merchant had paid $5,000 In cash for the 

30 



THAT FARM 

property, assumed a mortgage of ^10,000 at 5 per 
cent., traded in a small place in Delaware, and was 
to make the final payment of ^15,000 on Decem- 
ber 1st following. The ^10,000 mortgage had 
been standing for fifteen years with a savings bank; 
it could be taken up at any time. My landlord 
asked $50,000 for the farm. The difference be- 
tween the asking price and the taking price is as 
wide in a real estate transaction as in a horse trade. 
The place was for sale — that was the information 
I was after — so I had my agent advise the coffee 
merchant that I was not interested in the farm at 
his price — that, I found, being the usual way of 
opening real estate negotiations. Shortly after- 
ward I learned that the former owner of the place 
had used the $15,000 payment due him in Decem- 
ber as margin in a stock brokerage office, the 
brokers had failed, and a third party liquidated the 
account. At the time of the failure the account 
showed a debit balance of $9,500; in addition to 
that sum the third party paid $2,500 and received 
an assignment of the claim for $15,000 against the 
coffee merchant. If the obligation was paid when 
due there was a profit of $3,000 and interest in 
the transaction; if it was not — well, that was 
the gamble. Mr. Third Party, however, for some 
reason (perhaps he had investigated the coffee 
business), was trying to get out of his bargain. I 

31 



THAT FARM 

learned that he had tried to dispose of his claim for 
$12,500. I offered him that amount for it, but he 
refused. Some time later he wrote me that he 
would entertain an offer of $14,000. After con- 
siderable haggling we met in the middle and the 
deal was closed for $13,250. 



32 



CHAPTER IV 

IN WHICH I CLOSE THE DEAL AND START FARMING 
OPERATIONS IN EARNEST 

THOUGH I had now cleared away some of 
the obstacles, 1 was really no nearer actual 
personal ownership of the farm than I was 
when negotiations started, so I got on the trail of 
the coffee merchant. He was a corpulent, pom- 
pous individual who had come east from Chicago 
just after the Columbian Exposition. His princi- 
pal stock in trade was a tremendous assortment of 
deformed ideas that he insisted upon displaying 
like a line of wash out of a tenement window. 

He talked of proposed railroad improvements that 
would cause tremendous increases in values in the 
vicinity of the farm; he had inside information that 
the next legislature would make a generous appro- 
priation for new roads in that section; a trolley line 
was to skirt the edge of the property, etc., etc., 
until I was on the point of thanking him for his 
generosity in allowing me to occupy so valuable a 
property. To lease such a place was concession 

33 



THAT FARM 

enough, but to ask him to sell it — surely that 
would be a terrible insult! But the depressed con- 
dition of the market in his pet commodity had 
somewhat cracked the veneer of braggadocia in his 
make-up, for, notwithstanding all the wonderful 
things that had been said, he would shade the origi- 
nal price to $40,000 in order to conclude the matter 
speedily. I had never "traded" in reality; I had 
bought and sold a great deal of property through 
my agents, but I had never tried personally to 
strike a bargain. I concluded to try my hand. 

The coffee business had not improved any with 
my landlord since I first heard of its unsettled con- 
dition from the old caretaker, and December was 
only six weeks away. I explained that I wanted 
the farm solely as a business proposition, and the 
benefit to be derived from the many proposed im- 
provements he spoke of was too remote to be con- 
sidered. The place was in a badly run-down con- 
dition and a great deal of money would have to be 
spent on it to bring it up to a point of profitable 
productiveness, therefore I could not handicap the 
business with too great an investment in the origi- 
nal plant. The deal hung fire and I heard nothing 
more of it until early in November, when I had a 
visit from my landlord. He was anxious to bring 
the matter to some definite conclusion and asked 
me to make him an offer for the place. 

34 



THAT FARM 

There was a broker in the city at that time who 
dealt in old securities. He was a tall, thin, bearded 
man whose manner and appearance bespoke the 
patience that was necessary in the occupation he 
had chosen. Sometimes among those dusty certifi- 
cates he would find something of value, but I 
doubt if he made much of a fortune at it. In going 
over the contents of my safe deposit box I gathered 
together a number of stocks and bonds that repre- 
sented unlucky investments of past years and was 
going to turn them over to the "specialist in old 
securities." The pile was lying at my elbow when 
the coffee merchant entered my office. 

I told him that I would assume the incumbrances 
on the farm and give him thirty acres of land on 
Chesapeake Bay that carried with it an extensive 
oyster bed; I had not seen the property for a num- 
ber of years and I did not know what condition the 
oyster bed was in, but the land was free and clear 
and the taxes were paid up. I thought of the se- 
curities at my elbow and I added that I would also 
give him 500 shares of Guanajuato Mining & 
Milling stock; this mine, I understood, was on the 
Veta Madre vein, which was the richest silver vein 
in the world. To that I would add 100 shares of 
Granite Mountain Copper Co., 200 shares of Inter- 
national Securities Co., 400 shares of Mill Plain 
Electric Light & Power Co., and ^5,000 in cash. 

35 



THAT FARM 

Those securities, I explained to him, had cost me a 
great deal originally, but I was unable to give him 
a present quotation on them. 

He shook his head slowly from side to side to in- 
form me, no doubt, that my proposition was rest- 
ing none too well on his system; then he smilingly 
inquired if the securities I had mentioned were 
traded in on the Stock Exchange or on the Curb. 
After making some memoranda he departed, tell- 
ing me that I would hear from him. After re- 
peated efforts on his part to get me to inject more 
cash into my proposition he finally agreed, late in 
November, to accept my offer, and title to the 
property was transferred to me. 

I can hardly describe the inward glee with which 
I pocketed the deed. To all outward appearances 
I was the staid dry-goods merchant of High Street; 
within I was a small boy with a new sled. But 
that was nothing to my exuberance of spirits the 
first time I visited the farm after its purchase. 
With what cockiness I strode across my brown 
acres, saying, "This is my farm. It is my soil. I 
can make it grow wheat or tares as I choose. I 
shall make it prove my theories." 

We spent the holidays at the farm. I shall never 
forget that Christmas — it was the most pleasant 
I have ever had. There was about a foot of snow 
on the ground and the sleighing was superb. We 

36 



THAT FARM 

drove Into the woods on a bobsled and I cut the 
Christmas tree; as I recall that tree it was not more 
than five or six inches in diameter, but it was a tre- 
mendous task to cut it down, for a dry-goods man 
is not, as a rule, overcunning with an ax. It was 
set up in the *^ picture gallery" and on it we hung 
presents for every one on the place. Into Layton's 
package I slipped a bottle of "Old Bourbon" and 
a box of cigars. Besides our own family we had 
ten visitors, and for a week or more the farm was 
no place for a nervous patient. I turned over the 
care of preparing a New Year's dinner to a city 
caterer who came up and provided for the wants 
of our own party and thirty invited guests from 
neighboring farms. 

I always have thought that dinner strained the 
roof timbers a little. It was certainly an affair 
such as Peaceable Hill had not seen in many a long 
day. My cigars, somewhat superior to the local 
brand, helped to break down the social barriers, 
and my wife did the rest when she sang "The Low- 
backed Car." The departing hour was i a. m., 
when old Uncle Tom Stevens, with whom I had 
become very chummy, was discovered sound asleep 
in his chair. 

Before leaving. Uncle Tom expressed his entire 
satisfaction and gratitude for the evening's diver- 
sion. 

37 



THAT FARM 

"Now that we're neighbors," he said, "I hope 
you en the Missus will come over to see my folks. 
Thar ain't nobody ever stayed on this place long 
enough to get acquainted with 'em. Ever since 
Bellair's time it ain't been nothin' but move in, 
then move out, just in en out, in en out. A lot o' 
people calls it the hoodoo place, en it does seem 
curious that nobody ever made it pay. You know, 
Jim Bellair had one child, ^ Billy Boy' he called 
him, en he died here. Then Jim he took to drinkin' 
right smart till directly he lost his mind en finally 
died from some sort of brain trouble. The place 
was sold while he was sick, en Mrs. Bellair she 
moved away in a little while after that. I ain't 
never heard where she went to. Old Layton knows 
all about it; get him to tell you some time." 

During that holiday visit I started some of the 
necessary improvements about the residence. The 
house proper is an important factor in farm life, 
and I intended to have mine comfortable. By 
summer I had hardwood floors throughout the 
house; two additional bathrooms in the main part 
of the dwelling, and one in the servants' quarters. 
In the "picture gallery," which we had used from 
the start as a living-room, I built a fireplace which 
is a replica of one in the home of an uncle of mine 
down on the river below Richmond. 

The only obstacle that prevented me from carry- 

38 




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THAT FARM 

ing out my plans for operating the farm had been 
removed when I purchased the property, so I 
turned my attention to the business side of the 
place. Because of the availability of the market, 
the production of milk appealed to me from the 
start; the factory in the village paid four cents a 
quart at that time for milk. The cattle would 
average about 5,000 quarts per head annually, or 
$200 each; with all charges taken into considera- 
tion that was an attractive proposition, so I bought 
twenty Holstein cows. Those with the fifteen that 
I had on the farm gave me a herd that would earn 
about $7,000 a year. I bought only thoroughbred 
stock because, to begin with, there is a certain satis- 
faction in raising clean bred animals; the cost of 
maintenance is no greater than with grades, and, 
when properly bred, they are better producers. 

These theories I applied not only to the cattle 
but to all the live stock. I reserved eight of the 
best sows on the place for breeding purposes and 
bought six from a Massachusetts breeder; I also 
got a new service boar. The demand for pork in 
the nearby village was at times oversupplied be- 
cause the farmers from the adjacent country all 
disposed of their hogs there during the killing sea- 
son, but there was an unlimited market in a city of 
30,000 inhabitants eight miles away. 

After adding extensively to the poultry houses, 

39 



THAT FARM 

I bought 300 more White Leghorns. I put the 
chickens in the care of the gardener, an energetic 
young German named Weber. I only raised 
vegetables for our own use, so the gardener and 
his wife had ample time to devote to the poultry. 
I paid the couple $45 a month and supplied them 
with fuel and potatoes; they lived in one of the 
cottages on the place. When monthly wages were 
paid, without board, the local custom was for the 
employer to furnish fuel and potatoes. 

I had in my employ, when I started, an overseer 
at ^50 a month; I paid him in addition $12 each 
for boarding the four other men employed on the 
place. The old caretaker was not on the regular 
pay roll; he lived apart from the other men and I 
supplied him with what he needed. 

The farm and its equipment differed perhaps in 
very few particulars from farms that many of you 
have owned or now have. No doubt the methods 
I employed at the start will sound familiar to you, 
so I am going to tell you of some of my early ex- 
periences and what they taught me; in the lessons 
that I learned perhaps there may be something 
you can profit by. 

I have made my farm pay, but in doing so I 
have had my full share of disagreeable experiences. 
Some of them, perhaps, might have discouraged 
me but for the fact that I went to the country ex- 

40 



THAT FARM 

peeling to find them. It has been no easy matter 
to change the face of 400 acres of abandoned land 
from an unprofitable farm into a payinginstitution. 
Timothy does not grow up overnight in place of 
weeds, nor wheat and corn and oats flourish where 
briars have been, until a lot of time and labor 
has been spent upon the soil. Farming is no 
child's pastime, and it is an unfortunate mistake 
to get the impression that the business does not 
require mental and physical eff'ort in its develop- 
ment. So in the succeeding pages, if we seem to 
have made the land blossom, bear in mind that we 
plowed and harrowed for our harvest, and our 
dollars have been coined out of constant effort. 



41 



CHAPTER V 

IN WHICH BUILDING OPERATIONS AND HOG 

CHOLERA CLAIM ATTENTION, AND WE 

DECIDE TO MAKE THE FARM OUR 

HEADQUARTERS 

THERE are few things on a farm that a man 
enters into with more pleasure than mak- 
ing alterations and improvements to meet 
the requirements of his business — or his fancy. 
The desire to build seems to come instinctively to 
most of us; it manifests itself in a child with his 
building blocks, and the boy who has not made 
snow houses or thatched roof log cabins in the 
woods has missed something in life. It is a pleas- 
ure to see new fences take the place of old ones 
patched with barbed wire, to see weather-beaten 
buildings transformed from eyesores into adorn- 
ments by the magic of the painter's brush. There 
is a satisfaction in the knowledge that the elements 
no longer come in through defective roofs on the 
stock and crops. 

In making the alterations at that time in the 

42 





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THAT FARM 

buildings, I was governed by the ideas I had In 
mind concerning the equipment of the farm. In 
other words, I had figured out the income from an 
acre of corn, a cow, a hen, etc., and arranged my 
working plant accordingly. So in order to provide 
suitable accommodations for the 500 chickens on 
the place, I doubled the size of the original hennery, 
making a building 150 feet long and 15 feet wide, 
divided into ten sections; the lower part of each 
section was a scratching pen and the upper part 
contained the roosts and laying compartments. 
A passageway 4 feet wide ran through the entire 
length of the building. In front of each section 
there was a wired runway 100 feet in length. Just 
west of the hennery was a building that had evi- 
dently been built for a tenant house; it contained 
five rooms, three on the first floor and two on the 
second, and a good cellar. It had been used as a 
storeroom for garden tools, and was unfit for occu- 
pancy by a tenant, so I used the cellar for an 
incubator room; the upstairs afforded splendid 
accommodations for the young chicks. 

The entire upper part of the cattle barn was a 
haymow; the lower part contained thirty-five 
swinging stanchions on each side of an aisle 12 feet 
wide. I tore out thirty of them and converted 
the space which they had occupied into a much- 
needed feed room. I put down concrete floors in 

43 



THAT FARM 

place of the clay that had been there, and fixed 
iron water troughs between the stanchions for the 
cattle to drink from. There was not enough sun- 
light or fresh air in the building to suit me, so I 
added fifteen windows along the south and east 
sides, and put in six ventilators. At one end of 
the barn, and accounting for the tremendous 
length of the building, was a silo pit 40 feet long, 
20 feet wide, and 15 feet deep, covered by a build- 
ing the roof of which was 15 feet above the surface 
of the pit. I filled in the silo level with the ground 
and put ten windows around the sides; it made a 
splendid place for young stock during the winter 
months. In front of the cattle barn, and con- 
nected with it by a covered passageway 15 feet 
long, was a stone dairy room 25 feet long and 20 
feet wide. In one part of the room was a wooden 
trough capable of holding thirty forty-quart milk 
cans; it was used for cooling milk, water running 
through it by gravity from a spring in the hillside 
about 200 feet away. I built in place of the wooden 
trough a concrete vat, allowing the water to run 
through as before. I changed the outlet pipe from 
the vat so that it supplied the iron water buckets 
in the cattle barn with the overflow. 

After repairing and adding to the piggery I had 
twelve farrowing pens and accommodations for 
100 head of young stock. That building stood 

44 



THAT FARM 

on an elevation at the west side of a twenty-acre 
lot that was used for a hog range. A brook that 
rose on the farm flowed through the field, and on 
the eastern side was about an acre and a half of oak 
and chestnut timber that furnished shade for the 
animals. 

On the north side of the barnyard was a corn 
crib that had outlived Its usefulness. I tore it 
down and built In Its place a combined corn crib 
^nd granary; the capacity of the crib was 3,000 
bushels, and In the bins opposite 2,500 bushels of 
other grains could be stored. Those were the prin- 
cipal Improvements that I made at that time, but of 
course there were fences and little things here and 
there that kept the mechanics tinkering until fall. 

My plan of farm management then was to pro- 
duce milk for the factory, eggs, poultry, pork, hay, 
and grain. From the cattle I expected annually 
about 5,000 quarts of milkeach ; atfour cents a quart 
it would mean ^7,000 from the thirty-five head. 
The 14 sows I looked to for the production of 165 
pigs that would dress 125 pounds apiece; dressed 
hogs were worth 10 cents a pound at that time, so 
I expected about ^2,000 from pork. The 500 hens 
I thought would earn about ^1,000. These figures, 
of course, were gross, but I estimated the hay and 
grain crops to cover all the farm expenses. 

There were 15 acres in rye that had been planted 

45 



THAT FARM 

the previous autumn. In addition there were lO 
acres in wheat, 40 acres in oats, and 50 acres in 
corn. I pastured 35 acres of meadowland and had 
left 155 acres. 

On the first of each month the milk factory paid 
the farmers for the milk received from them. In 
the spring I noticed a falling off in the amount of 
the check which they sent me. My overseer in- 
formed me that the price of milk was fixed by the 
factory every three months, and that it varied 
from time to time. During the winter months 
they paid 4 cents a quart, but in summer the 
price went down to 90 cents for 100 pounds, or 
about one and four fifths cents a quart. That 
milk, by the way, was shipped into the city, bot- 
tled, and sold for 9 cents a quart. Of course 
the cost of producing milk was lowest to the farmer 
during the summer months, but the factory made 
no reduction in the price of its goods to the city 
consumer. Incidentally I learned that they paid 
annually, on their common stock, dividends of 
from 12 per cent, to 16 per cent. There seemed to 
be a necessity for an adjustment of the relations 
between the farmer and the milk factory. Al- 
though I had no definite plan in mind, I neverthe- 
less determined to try to correct that abuse. I 
little knew at the time, however, what a fight this 
was going to get me into later on. 

46 



THAT FARM 

But to return to the farm: The sows farrowed 
during March and April and we had io6 pigs to 
carry through for market. They did handsomely 
on the twenty-acre range, receiving only one feed 
a day. One half of the ration consisted of a by- 
product of a cake and cracker factory; this cost 
$14.50 a ton, including transportation charges. 
The other half was made up of wheat bran, corn- 
meal, gluten, shorts, etc., fed, of course, at differ- 
ent times. 

One day, in the early part of August, I was in the 
cattle barn figuring out some plans I had in mind 
for the milk business, when Wilkins, the overseer, 
came in. 

"Mr. Whittingham," he said, "there's a dead 
pig down in the lot, and about a dozen others won't 
eat; I don't know what ails 'em." 

We went down to the hog pens and found the 
sick pigs buried in the straw coughing or staggering 
aimlessly about. 

"Wilkins," I said, "you run up to the house and 
telephone for the veterinarian to come out here as 
quickly as he can." 

After performing an autopsy on the dead pig and 
examining the sick ones, the doctor informed me 
that the hogs had cholera. 

Hog cholera! In all my plans and calculations 
that certainly was one thing I had never taken into 

47 



THAT FARM 

consideration. From the day I first felt the spell 
of the farm in my bones, through all the years I had 
studied failures and worked out more or less prac- 
tical means of avoiding them, even after I began to 
learn disappointments from experience, never once 
did I dream of that deadliest of all farm enemies 
that steals in so treacherously to share your profits 
— or to wipe them out entirely. Up to that time, 
through some strange good fortune, I had escaped 
sickness among the stock, there had not been so 
much as a case of colic on the place, but my first 
lesson was to be a bitter one. The veterinarian 
told me that almost every community had a difi"er- 
ent cure for cholera, but in his opinion there was 
not one that amounted to anything. There were 
some things that could be done, however, to check 
It in a way. 

So with his help we entered upon the most dis- 
agreeable experience I have ever had on the farm. 
For ten weeks we fought that destructive disease 
in every conceivable manner. We segregated the 
infected animals, even keeping apart, as much as 
possible, those in diff"erent stages of the malady. 
The pens were fumigated and scoured and disin- 
fected, the hogs were washed in powerful antiseptic 
solutions, and the pharmacopoeia seemingly con- 
tained no remedy that we did not try. 

Wilkins reported to me every morning the devel- 

48 



THAT FARM 

opments of the night before. His usual greeting 
was, "Another hog dead this morning." One 
young Berkshire boar that I prized very highly I 
had moved into a building by himself, and for six- 
teen days I doctored him. Were I to set down 
here a list of the remedies I tried on that pig I be- 
lieve the average druggist's stock would look like a 
family medicine case by comparison. After I had 
exhausted everything else I tried a famous prescrip- 
tion that had worked wonders some years ago 
during the cholera epidemic in Vienna, but the 
Berkshire boar only turned a delicate violet hue 
around the snout and in the flanks. On the morn- 
ing of the seventeenth day he turned up his toes. 

It was late in September before we finally 
checked the disease. I looked over the mortuary 
record in my pocket and found that forty-five of 
the fifty-one infected hogs had died; the other six 
never amounted to anything. The fifty-five that 
had escaped infection were marketed in the winter. 
Only one of the brood sows was affected by the dis- 
ease, but she seemed to recover entirely in a few 
days. 

I had always considered the hog industry one of 
the most profitable branches of farming, but how 
could I reasonably expect to continue it with no 
known curative or preventive measures to guard 
against a repetition of the experience through 

49 



THAT FARM 

which I had passed? Evils that admit of correc- 
tion lose much of their hurt, but there Is a calami- 
tous feeling about an ill that we are powerless to 
cope with. I would have stopped breeding hogs 
at that time but for a common belief In that lo- 
cality that "cholera was like lightning, it never 
struck twice in the same place.'' In the absence 
of anything better I became a temporary convert 
to that superstitious belief. 

There was nothing in the manner of planting or 
harvesting our crops that would justify the use of 
space necessary to tell of it. Those operations 
were carried on under the direction of my overseer, 
whose knowledge of farming had come down from 
his father before him. Perhaps the results of that 
year's work may explain enough. 

The thirty-five cows produced 163,800 quarts of 
milk during the year; the average price paid by 
the factory was two and one half cents a quart. 
From the fifty acres of corn we husked 2,500 
bushels; fifteen of those fifty acres had been a 
"sour cold meadow," and notwithstanding 750 
pounds of fertilizer to the acre the entire piece 
yielded only 185 bushels. From the forty acres of 
oats we threshed 1,100 bushels; there were fourteen 
horses on the place and no oats were sold. Three 
hundred bushels of rye and 175 bushels of wheat 
were harvested; the rye was ground for the hogs 

50 



THAT FARM 

and the wheat fed to the poultry. The hay crop 
from 155 acres was 172 tons; we had thirty-five 
tons to sell. The total receipts follow: 

163,800 quarts of milk at 2| cents a quart . . $4,095.00 

1,800 bushels of corn at 35 cents a bushel . . 640.00 

35 tons of hay at ^20 a ton 700.00 

55 dressed hogs at ^9.50 a 100 pounds .... 693.00 

2,500 dozen eggs at 25 cents a dozen .... 625.00 

300 chickens at 50 cents each . . . . -. . . 150.00 

25 calves averaged $9.50 each 237.50 

25 tons of straw at $11 a ton 275.00 

Total $7,415.50 

There were seven men on the farm pay roll, 
another having been employed to drive the milk 
wagon and tend the hogs; two extra hands were 
taken on for a month during haying season, and 
two for a month to assist in husking corn. With 
the exception of the gardener, the men lived in the 
overseer's cottage where they had their meals. 
Their wages and keep, together with the other 
farm expenses were as follows: 

Overseer at $50 a month $ 600.00 

Gardener and wife at $45 a month 540.00 

5 farm hands at $25 a month each 1,500.00 

2 extra hands for two months at $45 each . . . 180.00 

Keep of five men at $12 a month each .... 720.00 

Feed for cattle, hogs and poultry 1,780.00 

SI 



THAT FARM 

Blacksmithing, repairing, and incidentals . . . ^ 200.00 

Fertilizer 750.00 

Taxes and insurance 440.00 

Total $6,710.00 

To have taken into consideration such trifling 
items as interest on my investment and deprecia- 
tion on ^7,700 worth of live stock and im.plements 
would have been observing a rule of accounting 
that is religiously ignored by farmers. 

It would be folly to say that I was not disap- 
pointed in the business side of my venture as far 
as it had gone. My specific purpose in going on to 
a farm was to conduct it as a business. I believed 
that it would pay from the start, operated through 
the agency of an overseer to whom I supplied every 
instrument he thought necessary to aid him in his 
work. In that belief I was wrong, as the dollars- 
and-cents results proved. While I had learned a 
great deal from observation, my knowledge of 
farming was, nevertheless, mostly theoretical. My 
intention was to apply my ideas gradually to 
the management of the farm until I should have 
the entire plant running along lines that I believed 
to be correct, but the chagrin I felt at my first 
year's eflfort somewhat altered my original plans. 
I had no intention, however, of advertising "for 
sale, a fully equipped farm," nor was I going to 

52 




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IS 

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to 

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THAT FARM 

father a failure; so I argued that there was but one 
thing to do. 

That was to begin all over and again do as I in- 
tended when my farm was only the top of a library 
table. I had found out one thing that most "city 
farmers " never learn, or if they learn it they conceal 
the fact very carefully, and that is that a farm 
cannot be profitably conducted through an overseer 
when the proprietor is away from the place for seven 
months during the year. I would not for an in- 
stant reflect upon overseers as a class, because there 
are good men among them, honest, sober, and in- 
dustrious; I know of one on a pomegranate farm 
on the island of Madagascar, and another who suc- 
cessfullymanages a chicken farm outside of Cochin, 
China, but there are some on New York State 
farms who have neither wings nor halos. 

So I discussed with my wife the new phases of 
farm life that had developed since we became ac- 
tively engaged in it. With the knowledge of 
ownership there had come a marked difference in 
her attitude toward the farm; she had always 
found keen enjoyment there, but apparently felt a 
certain sense of insecurity in tenancy. After we 
bought the place, however, she began to show a 
lively interest in everything pertaining to it. To- 
gether we planned the improvement of her own 
domain about the house, and the development of 

53 



THAT FARM 

the other acres that held the right or wrong of an 
idea that I had nursed into a conviction. 

One evening she was laboring with a badly work- 
ing fountain pen over a plan for her flower garden; 
it was hardly a working drawing, but notwith- 
standing the irregularities of draughtsmanship and 
the blots, it seemed to mean a lot to her. Of 
course we were talking farm. After she had ar- 
ranged the flowers in what was supposed to be a 
circular bed, she said : 

"I think it would be a good plan if we went up 
to the farm for a day or two every month while 
we are living in the city; that would enable you, in 
a way, to supervise the work there. Then perhaps 
we could go up somewhat earlier in the spring and 
remain later in the fall.'' 

That was all right as far as it went, but a day 
or two each month was hardly time enough to 
devote to the management of a 400-acre farm. We 
tried it for one month, and then I advanced my 
forces into the enemy's country. 

"How would it do," I suggested, "to reverse 
your plan about going up to the farm once a month ? 
Why not go up there to live and come down here 
once a month .^ My business here does not require 
the attention that my business there needs." 

At our time of life such a move as that proposi- 
tion involved was not made with the careless aban- 

54 



THAT FARM 

don of gypsies, so for many nights we discussed it 
in all its phases. My dry-goods business was in 
such shape that an arrangement of that kind was 
not at all impractical, and, after all, it was not like 
giving up our town home. We finally concluded 
to try the experiment; if we should find ourselves 
dissatisfied it would be no great task to take a train 
back to the city. We arranged to leave old Ellen 
Dwyer, who had been our cook for twenty years, 
in charge of the Centre Street house; she and her 
husband could keep it in readiness for occupancy 
on the occasions of our monthly visits to the city. 
The country house was completely furnished, so 
we had none of the horrors of moving to go through. 
We sent the servants up ahead of us to get the house 
in shape, and two days later, I remember it was the 
1 6th of January, my wife and I left for the farm. 



ss 



CHAPTER VI 

IN WHICH OLD LAYTON TELLS A HORSE STORY, 

AND I BECOME MY OWN FARM BOSS 

AND ENGAGE WATERS 

THE day after our arrival I told old Layton 
that we had come to make the farm our 
home, that we would live there the year 
round, and that I intended to manage the place in 
the future myself. I also told him that in working 
the farm he could be of a great assistance to me and 
I was going to look to him for it. The following 
night he came to the front door and asked for me* 
When I went out to see him he said : 

"I reckon you'd better take this key, 'cause I 
won't have no more use fer it." 

We never had any need for the big brass door 
key because there was a bolt on the inside of the 
door, but we had often spoken of the old man's 
peculiarity in holding on to it. We did not ask 
him for it, because we thought that perhaps it was 
part of that feeling of ownership he had for the 
property which we did not want to destroy. Old 

56 



THAT FARM 

people sometimes get as sensitive as a fox's ear and 
it is not right to hurt their feelings. 

It was very cold that night, I remember, and I 
brought old Layton into our living-room to rest a 
little, for he seemed a bit tired after plodding 
through the snow from his cottage up to the house. 
I had some Scotch whisky at the time — good 
Scotch, the kind that would coax a smile out of a 
mummy — and I poured two drinks of it. 

From the moment he entered the room Layton 
had been busy silently inspecting its contents. 
After his eyes had traveled several times over the 
furnishings he pointed his gnarled hand to a spot 
on the wall where I had hanging Correggio's 
"Soothsayer." 

"Right thar's where Skewer's picture used to 
be," he said. 

"Who was Skewer.^" I inquired. 

"Skewer.^ Ain't you never heard of Skewer.'*" 
he answered, with an expression of either pity or 
disgust. "Why, he was one of Mr. Jim Bellair's 
horses." 

"Oh, yes," I told him, "I have heard something, 
in a general way, about the horses and horse races, 
from the real estate man who rented me the farm." 

"That's young Haines. I reckon you did hear 
something about the horses from him, en about 
Mr. Bellair, too, but you didn't hear nothin' good, 

57 



THAT FARM 

'cause that family ain't never missed a chance, 
since Mr. Bellair died, o' blackguardin' him." 

Up to that time the old man had held his cap and 
old hickory stick in his hand, but he rested them on 
the floor beside him and continued: 

"You see it was this-a-way : Old Sandy Haines, 
the father o' this real estate man, was a farmer in 
them days, en he was the meanest man in writin' 
distance of the town. When Mr. Bellair first 
come up here old Sandy sold him a cow thet he 
said had been bred four months before en was due 
to calve the followin' October. That cow wa'n't 
goin' to have no calf, en old Sandy knew it when he 
sold her. We found out afterward that she 
wouldn't breed, so Mr. Bellair wanted him to take 
her back en give him a sound cow in her place, but 
old Sandy just laughed en said the cow had been 
bred as he stated en that was the end of it. Mr. 
Bellair, he smiled too, en said all right. 

"Now in them days they used to have horse rac- 
ing out back o' town every Saturday. Most every- 
body had a horse or two en they'd have some great 
times. Then after a few years they built a half- 
mile track en put up a little grand stand side of it 
so the women folks could come en see the racin'. 
That season sure was a good racin' year. It was 
four years after th' cow deal, en Mr. Bellair hadn't 
never said a word about it, but old Sandy asked 

58 



THAT FARM 

him once or twice if the cow had calved yet en he'd 
sort o' wink when he'd ask him. Old Sandy had a 
five-year-old black mare that was cleanin' up 
everything 'round. We had about ten head that 
was in trainin' en there wa'n't a one of 'em that 
could take a race away from old Haines's mare. 
The best horse we had in the barn was a big rat- 
tailed bay geldin' named Skewer. He had a mark 
o' iSJ, but it was just about a second en a half too 
slow to let him head old Sandy's black mare. 

"Anyhow, 'bout that time one o' the churches 
in town was tryin' to get money enough to put in a 
new organ. They had enough all but ^50, so Mr. 
Bellair he says to the men in town, 'We'll just get 
up a special race for the Fourth o' July, ^100 entry 
fee en ^50 more for those that start, the winner to 
make up the ^50 that's needed for the church or- 
gan.' Now, old Sandy never gave no money for 
anything en he wouldn't have put up a cent to save 
a church from a sheriff's sale, but he could see some 
money in that Fourth o' July race en he was the 
first to enter. 

"One day, 'bout a week before the race was to 
come oflF, Mr. Bellair he went away en didn't come 
back till the second o' July. He come in the back 
road one evenin' drivin' with another man, en they 
was leadin' a horse back o' the rig. It was Skewer 
as sure's you're born, all 'ceptin' Skewer's rat tail. 

59 



THAT FARM 

He give me the new horse en said there wasn't no- 
body to tend to him nor even to see him but just 
him en me. Next day he come out to the barn 
early en we began pullin' that horse's tail. Mr. 
Bellair he laughed now en then sort o' quiet to his- 
self, but we kept on a pullin' till that new horse 
didn't have no more tail than Skewer. When we 
was through I never see two horses in the world 
what looked more alike, all ceptin' the new horse 
had a little white on his off front foot just at the 
coronet, but we put some tar on that. When Mr. 
Bellair had done foolin' with the horse he walked 
round him two or three times en then he said to me: 
*Layton, this is Skewer. Don't forget it.' En I 
could hear him chucklin' to hisself as he went back, 
to the house. 

*'I ain't never been able to see just why it was, 
but when the Fourth o' July came thar wa'n't but 
two starters in that special race, old Sandy Haines's 
Queen o' Spades en Mr. Bellair's Skewer. They 
was to trot mile heats, best two in three, en the 
first one was to start at three o'clock. Skewer had 
the rail, en they scored twice 'fore gettin' away. 
There wa'n't nothin' between 'em for the first 
quarter, en they came past the stand for the first 
half with Skewer leading by a short length. At 
the turn they was even up. Then Skewer seemed 
to tire, for Queen o' Spades came up on him en was 

60 



THAT FARM 

more'n a length ahead In the stretch, en she won 
the heat by nearly two lengths. There was some- 
thing curious 'bout the way that new Skewer horse 
moved, just as square as a die, en I kind o' thought 
he wanted a little more o' his head than Mr. Bellair 
had given him. When they come under the wire 
Mr. Bellair was smilin' same as when we was fixin' 
up the new horse's tail that day. So when old 
Sandy's boy, what's the real estate man now, says 
out loud after the first heat: * Three to one that 
Queen o' Spades wins the race,' I just took ^lo of 
it. 

"In the second heat Queen o' Spades got a little 
the best o' the start, en Skewer trailed in her dust 
for nearly three quarters of a mile. Then he come 
up side of old Sandy's cart wheel. When they left 
the last quarter pole they was side by side, movin' 
like one horse. Sandy must o' got a little anxious, 
for he laid the whip on to his mare, en when he did 
she up in the air en broke, en she was galloping 
under the wire. The time for the mile was 2.17 
flat en old Sandy was frownin' en looked sort o' 
puzzled. 

"They rested up good before the third heat, en 
it was after four when they drove out on to the 
track. Skewer wouldn't turn just right, en they 
scored four times before they got away. Mr. 
Bellair drove away right smart at the jump-off, en 

61 



THAT FARM 

he was leadin' at the first turn, but old Sandy 
brought his mare up en caught him 'fore they'd 
got to the quarter. He was settled down to his job 
en drivin' the best that was in him. Queen o' 
Spades come by in the lead the first time round, 
with Skewer layin' right 'longside of his cart. 
Sandy didn't like it neither, 'cause he kept a-look- 
in' sideways at the rat-tail bay en helpin' his mare 
'long all the time. They done the first half in 
1. 08 J, en the black mare eased up a bit. Skewer 
fell back nearly a length, en opposite the stand 
Queen o' Spades went away again to the three quar- 
ter pole, but Skewer was at her flank when they got 
there. When they come into the stretch en levelled 
out for home the black mare was next the rail en 
racin' like the wind. Then the bay horse come 
up alongside till the two men could 'a' touched 
each other. Then Mr. Bellair he yelled out to old 
Sandy, 'I just want to say 'fore I leave you, that 
that cow hasn't calved yet.' Then he give that 
bay horse his head a little en come under the wire, 
sprinklin' dust from his cart wheel over old Sandy 
Haines en his Queen o' Spades. 

"That's why that family's so sore on Mr. Bel- 
lair. 'Course, I don't know 'bout how or not you 
can keep grudges up above, but if you can have 
'em, I'll bet old Sandy Haines is nursin' a healthy 



one. 



62 



THAT FARM 

"Did the church get its organ?" my wife asked 
as Layton got up to leave. 

"I don't know, ma'am; but Mr. Bellair give 'em 
the whole purse." 

We were soon established in our new home, and 
before the log fire in the "picture gallery" we 
again took up our plans for future farm manage- 
ment. On the first of February I gave my over- 
seer a month's salary in advance and let him go. I 
had a patent right to his job. 

Not the least of the favors of fortune that I have 
enjoyed in the country came to me in the man I 
employed to take the place of the overseer. His 
name was Frank Waters, and he had been working 
for $1.75 a day assisting a "general jobber" in the 
village. Originally he had come from Albemarle 
County, Va., where, for the first twenty-five years 
of his life, he had worked an existence out of a 
galled red hillside in the shadow of Monticello. 
He was conversant with ordinary farm methods 
and understood the care of live stock. I explained 
to him my past experience on the place and told 
him of my plans for the future. From thenceforth 
everything pertaining to the farm was to be di- 
rected by me. I did not mean, however, that he 
was to be a mere automaton; I expected his hearty 
cooperation and would welcome suggestions from 
him at any time. His salary and duties regarding 

63 



THAT FARM 

the feeding and care of the other men were the same 
as those of his predecessor. He moved into the 
overseer's cottage, with his wife, on the 4th of Feb- 
ruary. 

The few remaining weeks of winter were spent 
in getting things in readiness for the season's work, 
and on the 20th of March we commenced plowing. 

I am amused to-day as I look back upon my 
rapidly changing point of view. Hitherto the 
seasons had meant to me days of inventory, or 
changes of style, or closing-out sales. Spring had 
simply meant a turning point in the annual busi- 
ness cycle. Now it meant plowing. I had pre- 
viously thought in terms of yards and gross lots; 
now I found myself unconsciously estimating the 
acreage in my store and the number of cords in a 
carload of cloth. The merchant had become a 
farmer; his was the soul of a farmer. He was no 
longer at home in the city; he belonged out where 
buds were swelling and furrows were being turned. 

As the season advanced the fever got into my 
blood and I itched to be doing things. The spring 
seemed to come on laggard feet. I cannot help 
smiling now at my impatience. How little I knew 
of the disappointments and vexations and failures 
— yes, and the joys and triumphs — that were in 
store for me. 



64 



CHAPTER VII 

IN WHICH SPRING PLOWING AND PLANTING, THE 
HELP PROBLEM, HORSES, AND WATER SUP- 
PLY ABSORB MY ATTENTION 

THE fundamental principle of successful 
farming is getting from the land the maxi- 
mum of production at the minimum of ex- 
pense. One who can do that will, as a general 
thing, find little difficulty in disposing of his farm 
products to the best advantage. In agriculture, 
as in any other manufacturing enterprise, the effi- 
ciency of the working plant is the first and most 
important consideration. The soil is the instru- 
ment of production, and from it either directly or 
indirectly all farm products are derived; therefore 
it is false economy to deny it those things which it 
requires in order to perform its function properly. 
At least that was my impression when I assumed 
active management of my 400 acres. In its con- 
dition at that time I could not hope to make the 
place a commercial success, because if I worked 
every acre and got crops equal to the average in the 

6s 



THAT FARM 

neighborhood, the result would be far below my 
idea of what constituted a paying farm. Almost 
any man can make a living on a farm; in fact most 
of them do, but that is about all they make. 
When the end of the year comes around they have 
paid their bills and, perhaps, have added a couple 
of hundred dollars to their bank account, but they 
have had their heads through a yoke all year and 
pulled hard to do it. Not only has the farmer 
labored out of all keeping with the reward he has 
received, but his wife and his children have strug- 
gled with him. That is why country boys so often 
celebrate their twenty-first birthdays by packing 
up and leaving for the cities. Possessing only the 
meagre education of country schools they succeed, 
notwithstanding, in commercial life simply because 
of the brutal training received in childhood and 
youth on the farm; they suffer the hardships of city 
life and overcome them because they know that to 
turn back means worse. 

I was talking to the president of my bank in the 
city one day, and in the course of our conversation 
I touched on farming and my future plans regard- 
ing it. He told me that he had been raised on a 
farm near Collinsville, 111., and described a sample 
vacation day of his boyhood. He arose at four in 
the morning, milked ten cows and fed eight calves 
before breakfast; then he harnessed a team and 

66 



THAT FARM 

drove a load of milk into the village. On his re- 
turn he hoed corn until dinner. From one until 
four-thirty in the afternoon more corn hoeing; then 
he milked the ten cows again and fed the calves 
and work horses. After supper he fed the pigs 
and cut up firewood for the following day's cooking. 
And that was on his father's place, too. 

Can you imagine that bank president ever advis- 
ing any one to go to the country.^ Not unless he 
was cocained or made to do so at the open end of 
a revolver. Yet if his father, and other farmer 
fathers, would listen to some of the advice that is 
all but rammed down their throats, they would find 
that their sons would not be so anxious to desert 
them when they are grown, and they would also 
find that they would put by about five times as 
much money each year as they do now. 

Out West they are graduating out of drudgery, 
and they are doing it because they graduated from 
agricultural schools. Take a trip some time out 
into Minnesota or Wisconsin, or down through 
Kansas and Oklahoma, and have a little chat with 
those farmers. They will ride you around in auto- 
mobiles and show you their farms and talk crops 
to you, and, perhaps, discuss public affairs also, 
because they take a keen interest in them. They 
don't hang their heads in despair out in that coun- 
try because they are too busy making money. 

67 



THAT FARM 

And all that they have out there, that we have 
not got here in the East, is better land. They 
have not got our climate, nor our good roads, nor 
our railway facilities, nor our markets; in fact they 
enjoy comparatively few of the advantages that the 
Eastern farmer has and fails to appreciate. And 
each year the area of virgin land is diminishing be- 
cause what it has to give is taken from it without 
return, and the plundering farmer pushes on far- 
ther West. Thirty years ago a fertilizer salesman 
would have stood no more show of doing business 
in the Mississippi Valley than a flannel underwear 
agent in the Island of Tahiti; but that rich, black 
loam did not reach down to China, its plant foods 
were not inexhaustible, and to-day they are fertil- 
izing out there. And so it will be with the rest of 
that country before many years, because the pio- 
neers, the cream gatherers, have long ago reached 
the ocean's edge, and their eyes are already turned 
toward the country which, not so very long ago, 
they were advised to leave and "Go West." 

Soil fertility is the first essential on a farm, and I 
determined to restore mine to profitable produc- 
tiveness at whatever cost of time and money was 
necessary. With that idea in mind I had at the 
outset used commercial fertilizer without having 
any appreciation of the relation its ingredients bore 
to the requirements of the crop for which it was 

68 



THAT FARM 

used. Results proved that I was wrong, and I de- 
termined to adopt other methods. 

When plowing commenced I went into the fields 
with Waters and we dug small holes here and there 
with a spade; we found the surface soi4 from lo to 
12 inches deep over the entire farm, so I had the 
plows adjusted to cut a furrow lo inches In depth. 
In the 15-acre field, from which we had harvested 
only 185 bushels of corn the previous year, we 
found a clay hard-pan about 14 inches beneath the 
surface. That field was at one of the highest 
points on the farm and was naturally well drained, 
but notwithstanding that, it remained very cold 
and wet until late in the spring; it seemed to me 
that the hard-pan prevented the spring rains from 
soaking into the ground, so I sent subsoilers along 
after the plows to break It up. If that experiment 
did not prove effective, then I intended putting in 
artificial drains. 

On every acre of plowed ground I spread from 
30 to 35 bushels of burnt lime and harrowed it in. 
The harrowing, in fact, was done very thoroughly 
that spring. When my native farm hands had 
performed that operation to their satisfaction, I set 
them to work to do it to mine. I combed those 
220 acres of plowed ground until the soil was as fine 
as mustard seed. That work, however, did not 
seem to agree with the men, for one evening Waters 

69 



THAT FARM 

came in to inform me that they had "struck" for 
an increase in pay "because I was making them do 
a lot of extra work." 

I have noticed that farm hands, in making de- 
mands of that kind, generally select a time when 
they think the exigency of the moment will force 
you to accede to their wishes. 

I have always tried to deal fairly with the work- 
ingman, extending to him the same consideration 
that I demanded of him, because all my life I have 
been one myself. The man who directs his efforts 
from the side of a forge is just as potential a factor 
in society as the man who works at a roll-top desk, 
and so long as they do their work conscientiously 
and honorably, neither's position is to be under- 
estimated. 

I flattered myself, in coming to the country, that 
there was, at least, one thing in agriculture that I 
knew, that was the labor question. I knew it was 
a very troublesome problem, but I was always of 
the opinion that the fault was in most cases with 
the farmer himself. Farm labor is, as a rule, 
poorly paid and poorly treated. In our neighbor- 
hood the prevailing wage is from $i8 to $20 a 
month, and the men's quarters are none too good. 
So when my men "struck" in jobs that paid them 
^25 a month, and where they were well fed, and 
where they had comfortable rooms and a bath, I 

70 



THAT FARM 

could not see wherein I was called upon to devote 
any more study to the question. The labor ques- 
tion was just as much a part of my farming busi- 
ness as the planting of crops or the marketing of 
produce, so I dealt with that feature of it in a way 
I thought best for my enterprise. I argued with 
the men that they were well paid and had suffered 
no increase of work, but they were obdurate, and I 
was forced to let them go. 

The following day my wife and I went into the 
city on our regular monthly visit. I called upon 
an employment agency, with which I had done 
considerable business, and on the advice of the pro- 
prietor selected four Russians to take the places of 
the men I had discharged. They were active, 
vigorous looking men, and had been farm laborers 
in their native country. I put them on the train 
and telephoned Waters to meet them that after- 
noon. I made up my mind then and there to hire 
no more native labor. Up to that time I had been 
very fortunate in keeping men, and I thought that 
good wages and kind treatment were the solution 
of the much-talked-of labor problem in connection 
with the farm, but I was mistaken, at least in regard 
to the natives. Those four Russians, however, are 
still with me, doing their work well, and apparently 
contented. I paid them $25 a month each to start 
with, and raised that to $30 a month at the end of 

71 



THAT FARM 

the first year of service. Two years later I in- 
creased their wages to $35 a month, and I shall con- 
tinue to increase their salaries in a similar manner 
every two years so long as they remain in my employ. 

After I shipped my men off to the country that 
day I lunched at the club with a couple of brother 
dry-goods men and a mutual friend, a contractor, 
who was their guest. They all knew of my agri- 
cultural experiment, and the result was that we 
talked farm through the better part of that entire 
meal. Those men loved the country as much as I 
did, but they were confined to their desks with 
money mania. The contractor had been a race- 
horse man, between contracts, until the legislators 
purified that sport into unprofitableness. When 
the betting rings went out of business the race 
tracks closed, and the contractor, like many others, 
was left with a stable of horses on his hands. 

"Why don't you breed some horses up on that 
farm of yours?" he said to me. 

I told him that I intended to do so just as soon as 
I could find time to look around and get a good 
thoroughbred stallion. 

^ "FU send you a horse," he said, "that you can 
breed from. I won't give him to you, but you can 
have the use of him. FU only want him in case 
racing comes back, but the game looks too dead to 
skin just now." 

72 



THAT FARM 

The following week he shipped me a four-year- 
old son of Filigrane. He was a handsome seal- 
brown stallion, i6 hands high, and weighed i,ioo 
pounds. The contractor told me that the horse 
had won in purses upward of $70,000, over dis- 
tances of from one to four miles. Waters broke 
the stallion to harness and he proved a splendid 
road horse. 

In buying my work horses I had selected mares 
because I had in mind breeding them at some fu- 
ture time. My own mares, ten in all, were bred to 
the new horse, and I gave his services gratuitously 
to those farmers who would give me an option on 
the weanling colt at $50. Thirty mares were bred 
as a result of my offer; they were clean-limbed, 
middle-weight work horses, and I thought the cross 
would produce a spendid type of hunter. I wish 
I could have gotten five times as many colts the 
following year as I succeeded in getting. 

During the winter I had mapped out a crop plan 
that we followed when the planting season com- 
menced. In the 50 acres where corn had been we 
sowed oats and clover, fertilizing with a mixture of 
150 pounds of phosphoric acid and 50 pounds of 
nitrate of soda to the acre. We planted soy beans 
in the 40 acres that had been used for oats, drilling 
in 250 pounds of phosphoric acid and 150 pounds of 
muriate of potash to the acre. In the 105 acres of 

73 



THAT FARM 

old meadows we planted eight-row flint corn — 
that particular brand of corn produced the best 
results in our locality — and drilled in 250 pounds 
of phosphoric acid and 100 pounds of muriate of 
potash to the acre. We ran a weeder across the 
rows when the corn was 2 inches high, and again 
when it was about 4 inches in height. Fifteen 
acres were sown in buckwheat, 5 acres in potatoes, 
and 3 in mangels; the buckwheat and mangels were 
planted in ground that had been spread with barn- 
yard manure; the potatoes were fertilized with a 
mixture of nitrate of soda 3 per cent., phosphoric 
acid 6 per cent., and sulphate of potash 8 per cent., 
1,000 pounds to the acre. Four acres each of oats 
and of sweet corn were sown for soiling, an acre of 
each being planted at the same time at weekly 
intervals for a month. 

In the spring we had trouble with our water sys- 
tem. The farm was supplied by a windmill that 
raised water from the brook on the lOO-acre tract 
through a 2-inch pipe to a 6,000-gallon tank near 
the barns; from there it was distributed by grav- 
ity through the residence and outbuildings. The 
windmill seemed to have worn out all at once. 
Layton told me that it had been in use for nearly 
twenty years and very little had been done to it in 
that time. There was another mill on the main 
barn that pumped from a 40-foot well under the 

74 



THAT FARM 

building; the water was very hard, but we used it 
for our supply while I had two hydraulic rams in- 
stalled in the basement of the old grist mill by the 
brook. It was about 150 feet from the windmill, 
so I connected the rams on to the windmill pipe. 
The rams had a capacity of 2,500 gallons each 
daily, and by operating only one at a time we had 
an abundance of water. 



75 



CHAPTER VIII 

IN WHICH I DECLARE MY INDEPENDENCE AS 

A DAIRYMAN, AND MRS. WHITTINGHAM 

CATCHES THE GARDENING FEVER 

AFTER my experience in the production of 
milk I came to the conclusion that the milk 
factory had exploited that product of my 
farm long enough, so I advertised my cattle to be 
sold at public auction. I could have disposed of 
them at private sale, but I had a purpose in selling 
them as I did. I advertised the sale rather exten- 
sively, stating at the time that my reason for dis- 
continuing the production of milk was because of 
the low price of that dairy product. The sale was 
well attended, and as the farmers circulated around 
among the cattle I overheard this bit of conversation : 
"Well, this feller's got enough of farming. 
Guess you'll get his farm pretty soon for whatever 
you've a mind to give for it. There ain't no use in 
these city fellers trying to farm. Farming's a 
thing you've got to get same as a trade; there ain't 
no books can learn it to you." 

76 



THAT FARM 

I knew the old chap who was talking; his farm 
was about a mile up the road from mine, off to 
the left toward Waynesville. Whenever I passed 
there I always tried to avoid looking at it because 
it was so disorderly. His house stood on a raw 
dirt knoll, and half a dozen or more mongrel dogs 
were generally lying around on the little front 
porch. The front yard did not boast of even the 
conventional painted iron pot of geraniums, but it 
contained several badly made chicken coops, a lot 
of old wagon parts, and a variety of other trash 
that had apparently been there for years. From 
the front steps an irregular pathway led down to a 
gate that hung by one hinge. Generally a thin 
pig or two foraged among the debris. His wife, 
who looked as though yellow fever would be a va- 
cation to her, seemed always to be in the side yard, 
like one of God's forgotten ones, laboring over a 
tub of wash. 

Such was the condition of the home of the man 
who had expressed himself about my early effort 
at farming; the rest of his place was in perfect har- 
mony with his house and its immediate surround- 
ings. He kept some cows and, like nearly all the 
others in the community, "made milk for the fac- 
tory." I stepped over to where he was standing 
with his companions. 

*' Neighbor," I said, "I have overheard your 



THAT FARM! 

conversation and, while I believe that you are ab- 
solutely sincere in what you have said, you are 
nevertheless wrong and I want to correct you. I 
have not had enough farming. You will not get 
my farm for whatever you want to pay for it. 
And there are books than can teach a man to farm; 
the best one, by the way, is the book of accounts. 
I am selling my cattle because there is no particu- 
lar profit in producing milk for which the factory 
arbitrarily pays two and a half cents a quart. If 
they gave the farmer four cents a quart for his milk 
the year round, which is only a fair price, it would 
mean an increase of about ^50 a year in the earning 
capacity of each cow. Now if I succeed in having 
the price of milk fixed at four cents a quart will you 
agree to pay me, at the end of the year during which 
you have received that price, ^5 for each head of 
stock in your herd ? " 

Not only my critical neighbor, but every farmer 
at the sale unhesitatingly agreed to my proposition. 
I told them I had a plan in mind to accomplish 
that end, and I would take it up with them the 
following month. My cattle were sold without 
reserve, at an average price of ^61.50 apiece. 

While investigating the milk question I learned 
that the retail trade in the village was supplied by 
three separate dairymen who sold Holstein milk at 
seven cents a quart. I felt satisfied that there was 

78 



THAT FARM 

a market there for a better article and at a higher 
price, 90 I made up my mind to enter the field; in 
fact I determined to do so some time before I held 
my auction sale. I was very well equipped for 
the business, requiring only a delivery wagon and 
quart and pint bottles for the milk. I took Wa- 
ters with me on several trips into the adjoining 
counties, and at the end of two weeks we had 
gathered together thirty grade Guernseys at an 
average cost of ^65 a head. I paid $200 for a 
thoroughbred Guernsey bull three years old, be- 
cause I wanted to improve the grade of my cattle. 
I think, for ordinary dairy purposes, half-breeds 
are good enough, but by mating them with a thor- 
oughbred, and breeding their get in turn the same 
way, one will soon have a splendid herd of cattle. 

I sent in to the city employment agency for a 
bright, reliable milk-wagon driver, and they sent 
up a young fellow named James Dolan. My first 
impressions of him were not the best in the world. 
He was about five feet six inches tall, rather solidly 
built, and wore a very decided plaid suit of clothes, 
patent-leather shoes, red socks, and a green cravat 
hung with a new imitation diamond horseshoe pin. 
One of his front teeth was a fourteen-carat affair 
that drew one's attention when he smiled. Alto- 
gether Mr. Dolan did not seem to fit into the farm 
scheme very well, but he was energetic and looked 

79 



^ THAT FARM 

you in the eye when he talked, and those virtues 
covered more than one outfit of loud clothes. 
Then, too, he had had experience in the work for 
which I wanted him, and that was worth consider- 
ing. 

I explained to him that I was starting in the re- 
tail milk business and that he would be called upon 
to do considerable soliciting. His wages would be 
$30 a month, and in addition he was to receive 5 
per cent, of the gross income from the business. 
The milk was to be sold at 8 cents a quart. 
For the first month he was to deliver milk in pint 
bottles, free of charge, throughout the village. I 
advertised my intentions in the local newspaper, 
and on June ist the dairy commenced operations. 

If I wxre asked what branch of farming I con- 
sidered the most interesting, perhaps after long 
and careful consideration, I would say my cattle 
and my dairy. The business brought me into daily 
contact with the village, and the experience that 
came with the development added a new charm to 
farm life. Moreover, my fight to establish an in- 
dependent business furnished the stimulus, if any 
were needed, to throw myself whole-heartedly into 
the undertaking. The story of this struggle I will 
recount later. 

My attitude toward the hog industry, that re- 
sulted from the previous year's experience with 

80 



THAT FARM 

cholera, was not shared by the sows on the place. 
They were more industrious than ever, and we had 
112 pigs scampering over the hog range. It was a 
foolhardy thing, I thought, to undertake to raise 
them under the circumstances, but I reconciled 
myself to my folly in the knowledge that there were 
no protective steps I could take. I gave instruc- 
tions regarding the sanitation of the quarters, and 
ordered lime, salt, and charcoal kept available for 
the animals at all times. Then I quietly waited 
for the first "dead hog" report. It came in July, 
but it was due to the kick of a work horse that had 
accidentally gotten into the hog lot, and not to chol- 
era. There was not a shiver or a cough among 
those hogs that season, but my fear of disease was 
not allayed in the least. 

That year I added Barred Plymouth Rocks and 
Columbian Wyandottes to the poultry department. 
I wanted to raise the three breeds, one for eggs and 
the other two for broilers, so instead of hatching 
only White Leghorns as I had done the previous 
year, I put i,ooo Plymouth Rock and Columbian 
Wyandotte eggs into the incubators in February. 
We got 6io chicks from that hatch, and 2,100 
from the subsequent hatchings of Leghorns. Weber 
put up a stove in the five-room building that we 
used for an incubator and brooder house. He made 
small hovers to hold 50 chicks apiece, and arranged 

81 



THAT FARM 

them in the rooms so that the sunlight could reach 
them. Those hovers were very simple in their 
construction; they were 3 feet wide, 5 feet long, 
and 10 inches deep; in one end he built a box lined 
with sheepskin, and tacked a strip of cloth along 
the front. There was no artificial heat other than 
that supplied to the general atmosphere of the 
house by the stove on the first floor. The little 
chicks did wonderfully well under the care of Weber 
and his wife; they fed them finely ground corn 
and oatmeal and wheat, mixed to suit themselves. 
Fine sand was kept in the pens and fresh water was 
always at hand. There was no great cry for fancy 
patent foods and automatic brooders, but the birds 
and the quarters were kept clean; a good man will 
do that instinctively, and the feeding is no magic 
art — it is simply a matter of common sense. I 
have seen poultry plants equipped with every 
modern aid to success, and there are a number of 
them, plants stocked with the best birds procurable 
and managed by expert poultrymen, but I cannot 
say that the results are any better than where a 
reasonable amount of Intelligence guides the hands 
of an energetic country woman. I have always 
been of the opinion that eternal vigilance is better 
in the poultry business than all the formulas in exist- 
ence. 

The busiest place on the farm that spring was 

82 



THAT FARM 

my wife's sacred precinct about the house. She 
had a working force of her own consisting of one 
Italian day laborer, who came in the morning and 
went home in the evening. Under my wife's di- 
rection that Italian was working some wonderful 
changes in the home grounds. The plans she had 
labored so religiously over with the leaky fountain 
pen were serving the purpose for which they were 
drawn. I noticed her on several occasions take 
them from the pocket of her ruffled apron, study 
them for a few moments, and then give some new 
order to her lieutenant. She hedged her kingdom 
in with gooseberry and raspberry and currant 
bushes, gravelled walks led here and there to long 
beds and circular ones filled with the most wonder- 
ful flowers. Why is it that flowers bloom so well 
for a woman ? There was an elevation in the north- 
east corner of her garden and around it she set out 
some rose bushes to screen it in. A little well- 
trimmed pathway, with flower beds on either side 
led down into the main walk. One day I noticed 
a rather ornamental white bench, about 12 feet in 
length, set on the elevation, and a short time later 
six hives of bees were established there. The com- 
mercial spirit had apparently laid hold of her. 

At dinner one evening a few days after the ar- 
rival of the bees, she said : 

"The carpenter is coming to-morrow to put a 

83 



THAT FARM 

lattice framework around the north and east sides 
of the beehives; It will be a shelter against the 
winds, and with nasturtiums and honeysuckle, or 
perhaps crimson ramblers planted there, the effect 
will be very pretty. And, by the way, I think 

while he is here Fll just have him " 

'*But," I interrupted, "to-morrow is our day 
to go to the city." 

She paused for a moment, then said: 
"I really don't see how I can get away to- 
morrow/' 



84 



CHAPTER IX 

IN WHICH THE FIGHT ON THE MILK TRUST IS 
WAGED AND WON 

WHEN we stopped the free distribution of 
milk on the last day of June there were 
seventy-two customers on the books; 
they bought Ii8 quarts of milk daily. 

Perhaps that business may have resulted to some 
extent from our bright, cream-colored delivery 
wagon that was always conspicuous among its 
dingy companions on the village streets, or from 
the news articles (for which I paid first-class adver- 
tising rates) published each week in the local news- 
paper on the subject of milk; but, unless my 
twenty-five years' experience with salesmen were in 
vain, I am of the opinion that my retail milk busi- 
ness, that has grown to be the most important 
feature of my farm and is recognized as one of the 
town industries, was founded principally upon the 
efforts of my driver, James Dolan. Having only 
such education as he had been forced to acquire at 
intervals in a public school, but owning an abun- 

8s 



THAT FARM 

dance of energy, courage, and diplomacy, he can- 
vassed that town in a way that would have been 
difficult to improve upon. 

From the day that young man put aside the 
somewhat picturesque outfit in which he appeared 
on my place, and was transplanted into overalls 
and jumper, he began to take root in my estima- 
tion. He did his work cheerfully and thoroughly, 
the dairy room was always kept scrupulously clean, 
and every detail of the delivery wagon and team 
was carefully looked after. He seemed to appre- 
ciate the fact that his interest in the business ex- 
tended beyond monthly wages, and he worked 
accordingly. 

In a community where the copper cent is looked 
upon with veneration and respect, it is no light 
task to coax its owner into the investment of an 
additional penny for quality without any increase 
in quantity. I would have experienced no diffi- 
culty, after the first week of advertising, in dis- 
posing of the entire output of my dairy at the 
prevailing price of 7 cents a quart. The milk 
was clean and wholesome, and richer than that dis- 
pensed by the other dairymen; those who tried the 
gratuitous pints liked them and were glad to try 
more, but when it came to purchasing it at 8 
cents a quart, a penny more than they had always 
paid, the appreciation of life's good things was 

86 



THAT FARM 

subordinated, In many cases, to an innate respect 
for the copper coin of our government. Still, they 
were an intelligent people, and what I had written 
in the columns of the village paper was not lost 
upon them. 

The subject of bacteria in milk seemed to offer 
to James Dolan a fertile field for argument. There 
was a woman in the village, the wife of a locomo- 
tive fireman, who accepted seven bottles of free milk, 
but refused, notwithstanding, to acquire that com- 
modity bypurchase from us. Undaunted by his past 
fruitless (or mllkless) efforts to convert that good 
woman into a customer, James Dolan, armed with 
a pint of milk, essayed an eighth attack upon the 
incomprehensible obstinacy of the fireman's wife. 

"Well, Pve brought you another bottle of milk. 
This is the last, because we stop giving it away to- 
day — to-morrow we start selling it. I'd like to 
get you for a customer, but I guess I can't, because, 
as you say, you don't want to pay the price. Any- 
how, there's one thing more I want to tell you 
about milk; I haven't spoken about it before be- 
cause I didn't like to mention It to a lady, but this 
cheap milk you buy Is filled with blackteery. Of 
course you dunno what that is, like we do what's 
in the business; but, lemme tell you, blackteery is 
things just like polliwogs. I dunno just how 
many's in a bottle of milk, but there's a bunch of 

87 



THAT FARM 

'em swimmin' around and when you and the kids 
swallow 'em — well, they don't cause Instant death, 
but, gee whiz, just think of drinking polllwogs!" 

The locomotive fireman's wife Is still a patron of 
our dairy. 

In starting the retail milk business, selling, as 
I did, a comparatively high-priced article, I ex- 
pected to find patronage almost entirely among 
the better- to-do people in the community; so when 
I learned that more than 50 per cent, of the cus- 
tomers on the books were working people, I was 
particularly pleased at the way my venture was 
working out. I kept on advertising, in various 
ways, for a year, and the milk business increased 
steadily from month to month. The incentive to 
work which I had offered James Dolan, in the form 
of a percentage of the receipts of the business, was 
appreciated; in six months he Increased the daily 
sales 100 per cent. 

I seemed, at last, to have gotten my farming 
business started along feasible lines. The farm 
practices that I had chosen were adopted after 
careful investigation of general conditions, and If 
they worked out as I thought and felt they would, 
then the commercial side of farming would be no 
disappointment to me. The money I had spent 
on the place prior to the time I assumed actual per- 
sonal management of It was charged off to profit 

88 



THAT FARM 

and loss, except, of course, such as had gone Into 
permanent betterment of the working plant. My 
books of account, for example, show no entry of 
charge for the flower banked walkways and the 
ornamental beehives in my wife's garden. Nor 
have I recorded the cost of the fireplace in our 
living-room, before which we have sat so often 
and planned a future perhaps beyond our years. 
Those things might make a cross-entry for the 
happiness they have afl^orded us, and the commer- 
cial side would lose by balance. 

When I commenced operations, however, as 
"cook and captain too," I entered the following 
charges in my books : 

Original cost of farm ^28,250.00 

Improvements and additions to hennery . . . 440.00 
Improvements and additions to piggery ... 375- 00 
Improvements and additions to cattle barn . . 1,100. CX3 
Painting and repairing residence and outbuild- 
ings 1,214.50 

New granary 752.00 

30 grade Guernsey cows 1,950.00 

I Guernsey bull 200.00 

5 teams of work horses 1,875.00 

14 Berkshire sows 280.00 

I Berkshire boar 40.00 

Chickens 489.60 

Farming implements 1,510.40 

Total ^38,476.50 

89 



THAT FARM 

I had some money in my new enterprise, but 
I could see where, under ordinary circumstances, 
I would get good interest on my investment. 

There was no new territory into which the prod- 
ucts of my plant had to be introduced by expen- 
sive salesmen; no com.petition to gnaw the reward 
out of effort. The market was at my gateway, 
reaching out for what I chose to give. I often re- 
called the time when my partner and I each put 
^i,ocx) — our all — into the dry-goods business. 
We accepted goods from the manufacturer at his 
price, and then engaged in a battle royal to dispose 
of them. We worked long and hard in those days 
and, it is true, we succeeded in a way, but I wonder 
what would have been the result if we had applied 
that same time and effort to a farm. However, I 
was a busy man, well occupied in the new days that 
had come to me, and I had little time for retro- 
spection. The farm work was progressing beauti- 
fully; that spring was an ideal growing season and 
the crops were doing wonderfully well, so I con- 
cluded to take up the matter of the relations be- 
tween the farmers and the milk factory as I had 
promised them, and myself, I would do. 

When 1 determined to make an effort to correct 
the abuses that the farmers were suffering at the 
hands of the milk factory, I had in mind two plans 
upon which to work; either would require a plant 

90 



THAT FARM 

in which to operate, so I bought a piece of land in 
the village on which there was a long frame build- 
ing that had been used for a warehouse. I paid 
^8,000 for the property; the sale was considered a 
good one. At first I thought of starting a cooper- 
ative business and operating it along the general 
lines followed by the milk factory, but I found 
that it involved a tremendous amount of detail and 
expense, and the opposition of the factory, in- 
trenched as it was, could not be overlooked. So I 
concluded to start a cheese factory myself. 

Without going into tiresome details of the cheese 
business, suffice it to say that I learned that cheese 
could be produced at a profit from milk purchased 
at four cents a quart. The alterations and addi- 
tions to the warehouse on the property, and the 
machinery necessary for the business, would cost 
^9,000. A city concern guaranteed to have the 
plant in working order in ninety days. These de- 
tails I had gone into thoroughly before I took the 
matter up with the farmers. I drew up a form of 
contract in which I agreed to pay a uniform price 
of four cents a quart for milk the year round. For 
the first year, however, during which that price 
was paid, whether by me or through my instrumen- 
tality, the farmer was to pay me one half cent a 
quart for all milk sold, the second and third years 
he was to receive four cents a quart straight. The 

91 



THAT FARM 

contract covered three years, and I filed a suitable 
bond to insure the fulfilment of my part of it. At 
that time there were 220 farmers selling milk to the 
factory; of that number 180 signed my contracts, 
which became effective on the first of the following 
November. 

The stock in the milk factory was closely held in 
the village, and I was astonished to learn what an 
evil influence it was in the community. More 
than two hundred farmers in the surrounding 
country were nothing more than subjects of that 
organization; they engaged in nothing but the pro- 
duction of milk for which they were paid only 
what the factory saw fit to pay them. 

The president of the local bank was the largest 
stockholder; his name was Blake. He was a thin, 
stooped, leathery looking man, icy eyed and sharp 
featured, with a very prominent Adam's apple that 
bobbed up and down like a fishing cork when he 
talked. His collars were many sizes too large for 
him, and in his starched shirt front he wore a dia- 
mond that must have made Cecil Rhodes restless 
in his tomb on Table Mountain. Needless to say 
he was not wholly in sympathy with my new in- 
dustry. His attitude toward me was that of a 
man concerned only about the time to crush me, 
not the manner. Some country bank presidents 
have a unique way of building their estimation of 

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THAT FARM 

themselves to a great height from which they look 
down superciliously upon their urban brethren and 
the Treasurer of the United States. 

Toward his fellow townsmen he assumed the 
role of a public father, or pilot, or protector, or all 
of them, and mounted on an undersized, racking 
horse, equipped with a Texas saddle, he would ride 
around and keep a general supervision over village 
interests. He was a vicious, self-centred boss, 
and for twenty years he had ruled over the purses 
of the workers in the community. Villages out- 
side of the reach of his tentacles had progressed, 
farm lands had increased in value, and the people 
had prospered, but the bank president regulated 
business in his principality. He did not want any 
too much prosperity to come to the people because 
prosperity meant power, and power would tip his 
little throne over. 

One day I met Mr. Blake in front of the post- 
office. 

*'Well," he said, ** how's your new scheme com- 
ing on .^" 

** Beautifully," I told him, "we are about ready 
to commence work." 

"I suppose you'll make cheese with holes in it.^" 

"Oh, yes, but we are only going to sell the cheese; 
the market, especially around here, is rather well 
supplied with holes." 

93 



THAT FARM 

In going into the manufacture of cheese I had no 
intention of remaining in the business for any great 
length of time. Through it I saw how a serious 
evil in the community could be corrected in an 
effective and profitable manner. I had come into 
the neighborhood to live; it was my home, and my 
interest in its welfare was by no means confined to 
the boundaries of my farm. 

During the first month's operation of the cheese 
plant, the milk factory nursed its wrath in silence. 
To supply its needs, milk was shipped down from 
one of its branches thirty miles up the road; it 
worked full force and full time, apparently undis- 
turbed by its new competitor. Then it showed its 
teeth. Milk inspectors, whose jobs had been 
little more than sinecures, suddenly became active 
in the neighborhood. Those farmers who had 
signed my contracts had their herds and their 
buildings subjected to an inspection that was little 
short of persecution; some of the most flagrant 
cases I threshed out in court, and it served to make 
the inspectors more reasonable, but no less indus- 
trious in their annoyance of the farmers. 

The two feed dealers in the little ring-bossed 
village were manikins of the shifty Blake; they be- 
gan to discriminate in the extension of credit. 
Milk-factory employees, who were patrons of my 
dairy, were ordered to choose between my farm 

94 



THAT FARM 

product and their positions. The corpulent editor 
of the village newspaper, who had always smiled 
in satisfaction at the sight of my checks for adver- 
tising, denied me space in his paper on the plea 
that his columns were full. The lights burned late 
in the bank president's office, and old Blake put 
the dead sign on certain paper that his institution 
was carrying. His leathery face drew into a sinis- 
ter frown, the bushy eyebrows contracted over his 
unkind eyes. He stopped speaking to me. 

When a man fights you with a smile on his face 
look out for him, you may not beat him until you 
have killed him; but the man who winces and froths 
at the mouth is helping to defeat himself. The 
peace and tranquillity of my farm life seemed, for 
the moment, somewhat disturbed, but I enjoyed 
the fight. 

Through John H. Wrenner & Co., a La Salle 
Street brokerage house, I bought fifty carloads of 
grain on the Chicago Board of Trade. After de- 
ducting all charges I was able to sell it to the farm- 
ers at $1.50 per ton less than the price asked by the 
local feed dealers. I accepted the farmers' notes 
in payment, and I also took over such paper as 
Mr. Blake, in his blind rage, had discarded. If I 
had been ten years younger at that time I would 
have started a bank in the village; there was a 
most attractive opening for it just then. 

95 



THAT FARM 

But I must skip over the remainder of that quar- 
rel with the milk trust, or you may charge me with 
straying from the path I have chosen to follow in 
my later years, the path that has led me into ideal 
happiness. The outcome, however, may be inter- 
esting. At the end of its first business year the 
cheese factory closed its doors. I turned my con- 
tracts over to the milk factory; Mr. Blake repre- 
sented the factory in the negotiations. I retained 
ownership of the cheese plant with the understand- 
ing that I was not to engage in the business so long 
as the price of milk was maintained at four cents a 
quart: it had formerly been two and a half cents. 
My year's fight with the trust had cost me some 
odd dollars here and there, and I had paid good 
wages to my employees, but I had secured a living 
price for my neighbors, and after deducting all 
expenses, including the cost of the factory and 
equipment, the books showed a small profit at the 
close of business. 



96 



CHAPTER X 

IN WHICH I INDULGE IN DIGRESSIONS AND 
PERSONALITIES 

THE fight with the milk factory was not with- 
out its amusing incidents. There was a 
Httle fellow in the town by the name of 
French who was a stool pigeon for old man Blake. 
Jim French was a nervous, ruddy-faced, officious 
little man who sizzled about, poking into every 
one's business but his own. At one time in his 
life, tradition held, he had been a lawyer, but his 
authentic history dated from the time he had mar- 
ried a very distinguished literary woman of brains 
and means, and with her he came to make our 
town his home. For a man of his size little Jim 
French had a very extensive variety of shortcom- 
ings, the greatest of which was his liking for strong 
drinks, a misfortune that would weigh so heavily 
on him at times that he would undertake to shake 
off the weariness in the gutter with his head pil- 
lowed on the curbstone. That was very repellent 
to the aesthetic tastes of Mrs. French, but she bore 

97 



THAT FARM 

it very gracefully and financed her mistake in si- 
lence. But, after several years, the Inevitable 
separation occurred, and little Jim, for obvious 
reasons, was compelled to curtail his dissipation. 
About that time old Blake saw some valuable 
traits of character In Jim and he almost adopted 
him — but that Is another story. 

Jim French took upon himself the defence of the 
milk factory, and he vented his impotent rage 
upon me whenever an opportunity offered. One 
day while my oldest son was driving my automo- 
bile through the main street, he opened the cut- 
out, which was a violation of a village ordinance. 
It was a law that few knew of and fewer observed, 
but little Jim French promptly had my son arrested 
and brought up before *^ Justice" Hitchcock. 

The "Justice" had a little shop In one of the 
side streets; he was a nondescript sort of a gen- 
eral utility man about town — jack-leg carpenter, 
plumber, stone mason, house painter, and heaven 
only knew what not. At the time of the arrest he 
was working out on my place installing a new laun- 
dry stove. He was also very much in arrears in 
his account with my dairy, from which he got his 
daily supply of milk. At the same time, certain 
circumstances had compelled "Justice" Hitchcock 
to ask a favor of Mr. Blake's bank In the shape of a 
ninety-day note for $ioo, so the arrest placed him 

98 



THAT FARM 

in a most embarrassing position. It was too much 
for his judicial mind, too much of a strain on his 
diplomacy, so he adjourned the hearing until the 
following day. Surely he was hard driven. To 
discharge my son meant no further recognition 
from the bank, and he was going to ask them to 
renew that ^loo note. To fine the boy — well, 
there was that milk bill, and that unfinished job in 
the laundry. 

Next day, when Jim French had testified to the 
heinousness of the offence, and his dramatic evi- 
dence had been substantiated by two of his hench- 
men, who like little Jim just would talk, whether 
or not, because all three had whetted their civic 
pride in the hotel bar for some time before "court" 
convened, the "Justice," with the voice and bear- 
ing of one reading his own death warrant, looked 
appealingly at my son and said: "Three dollars 
fine." Then he beckoned my son over to him and 
whispered: "Tell your pa Til pay the three dollars 
and he can credit me with it on the milk bill." 

A peculiar incident occurred shortly after the 
settlement of that afi'air with the milk factory. I 
was inclined to think it had some connection with 
it, but I was mistaken; still there was nothing 
pleasant about it. 

One morning, in going through my mail, I came 
across a rather strange letter. If I had been su- 

99 



THAT FARM 

perstitious I might have been inclined to think 
there was some foundation for the application of 
"hoodoo" to my farm that I had heard many times 
since "Uncle" Tom Stevens first spoke of it at 
that dinner during the Christmas holidays. The 
letter was a long, disconnected affair from an old 
man in the village named Henry Welden, and was 
filled with penitence for a piece of dishonesty 
nearly forty years old. He was "about to die," 
and a conscience, quickened as they often are un- 
der such circumstances, was making his last days 
lively. I was naturally interested in the follow- 
ing extract from the letter: "... and the 
father, after drinking heavily for two years, lost 
his mind and died in August, 1880. About a 
month before his death Layton Davidson, who is 
on your place now, came in and drove me out to 
the farm; I was a notary public at the time. Mrs. 
Bellair, and a man she said was her brother, wanted 
me to take an acknowledgment of the signatures 
of Alice G. Bellair and James H. Bellair to a deed 
for the farm. James H. Bellair was insane at the 
time and down in bed, but I was given ^250, so I 
attested the signatures and went back to town. 
The next week the farm was sold ..." 

Whether there was any truth in the letter, or in 
that part of it pertaining to the title of my farm, I 
did not know, but it served to remind me of the 

100 



THAT FARM 

laxity in our method of recording deeds. When a 
deed is recorded the original instrument is returned 
to the grantee. Now suppose he, knowing that 
one of the signatures is a forgery, destroys the doc- 
ument, and subsequently the party whose name 
has been forged dies, how, in the absence of proof, 
is such an irregularity to be corrected .f^ 

About a week after the receipt of that letter I 
saw in the village paper a notice of the death of 
Henry Welden. Perhaps his confession was a com- 
fort to him in his last moments, but I must say it 
did not please me to any great degree. 

These digressions from matters strictly agricul- 
tural may appear to be rather apart from the 
management of a 400-acre farm, but in reality it 
was not. The production of milk for wholesale 
became a profitable occupation; strangers came 
into the neighborhood to engage in it, and the value 
of farm land increased. The milk trust increased 
its plant and working force, and outsiders settled 
in the village because they found work in the fac- 
tory. I had no difficulty in disposing of thorough- 
bred stock to the farmers who had formerly 
bought cheap scrubs. There was an increased de- 
mand for grain, and I sold every pound I could 
produce on the farm. My retail milk business 
increased in the village among the new factory 
workers. In other words, a little more for milk 

lOI 



THAT FARM 

enabled the farmer to see a little less unrewarded 
toil, and he began to appreciate. 

As a business man, a contest with a business 
monopoly was somewhat in my line, but that was 
not what I came out into the country for. I was 
pleased to find myself being accepted as a not un- 
important member of the community; being an 
outsider is never pleasant for long. But it was the 
rich, brown earth that called me, and it was in 
working as earth's partner that I achieved my 
highest satisfaction. 

So we will go back to the spring of that year on 
the farm, where we left Waters and his family 
with the stock and crops. It was our first year of 
real farming, and, as old Layton once remarked, 
"there was a heap of stirring about on the place." 



xoa 



CHAPTER XI 

IN WHICH AN OLD MILL IS REHABILITATED AND 
A TRUCK GARDEN DEVELOPED 

HAVE you ever known the country in spring? 
Not the season of the poet's imagination, 
nor his country, but springtime on a work- 
ing farm where the warblers are Leghorn and Ply- 
mouth Rock hens singing an egg chorus; where 
the lowing herd is producing milk worth eight 
cents a quart; where the squeal of a pig is the 
spring-song of a $20 bill (barring cholera). Spring- 
time where 400 acres of impoverished and aban- 
doned land begin to respond to the application of 
theories you have cherished through a successful 
dry -goods career. 

When I was a young fellow I had a friend with 
whom I often visited; he was the son of "Sir" 
Robert Handy who owned a farm at the junction 
of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. "Sir" 
Robert was not a foreign nobleman — he was 
the other kind. His title came to him late one 
night on the Natural Bridge Road when he was 

103 



THAT FARM 

riding out on horseback from St. Louis to his 
home. A passer-by called to him in the darkness; 
**Is that you, Jim?" and he answered: **No sin 
'tis I, sir, Robert Handy." From that night on he 
was "Sir" Robert. Of all the charming features 
of that beautiful farm, there was one thing in par- 
ticular which made a great impression upon me — 
that was the soil. The rich, black loam turned off 
the mould-boards of the plows like chocolate, and 
such crops as it produced! I remember an ear of 
corn he took from his crib one day — it measured 
l8 inches in length and weighed one and three 
quarter pounds. But perhaps you, too, knew that 
Missouri bottom land. 

That was the soil standard I had in mind when 
I began working my acres that had been impov- 
erished by centuries of civilization. Of course I 
could hardly hope for land like "Sir" Robert's out 
on the banks of the Missouri, but when I saw re- 
sults that spring from my first feeble effort to re- 
habilitate the soil, I was exceedingly hopeful. 

To me there seemed to be no branch of farming 
where science plays so important a part as in the 
care of the soil. It involves, of course, a knowl- 
edge of chemistry, but the farmer need not neces- 
sarily be a chemist; he can have his land ailments 
diagnosed and helpful prescriptions furnished by 
the agricultural experiment stations. The great 

104 



THAT FARM 

trouble is that farmers will not thoroughly awaken 
to the importance of those institutions where mis- 
takes are not only pointed out, but a means of cor- 
recting them is furnished without charge. They 
are free schools for the farmer, yet he avoids and 
belittles them. 

That is, some farmers do; some farmers do not. 
The difference between the two is just exactly the 
same as in any other instance where ignorant 
obstinacy and intelligent ambition enter into 
comparison. The sooner we grasp the meaning of 
scientific farming the better off we will be, for we 
must come to it. The day is almost gone when a 
man can scratch the surface soil, plant his seed, 
and harvest a crop that will pay. In fact, the day 
has already passed here in the East, because the soil 
has been robbed of the essential elements necessary 
for the proper growth and development of crops. 
Those elements don't come back into the soil of 
their own accord; they must be put there. It 
takes a little time and a lot of work, but when they 
arc back, and the proper care is exercised to keep 
them there, then the word *^ abandoned'' will no 
longer be used in connection with Eastern farms. 
So don't laugh at the "book farmer" who has been 
through a course at an agricultural school; better 
listen to him, for his is the true religion of the 
fields. It was necessary to drown a number of 

105 



THAT FARM 

people, on one occasion, before they finally appre- 
ciated the truth of Noah's sermons, but that need 
not discourage the Department of Agriculture. 

I have made a lot of mistakes on my farm and, 
in fact, am still making them; some things have 
required many changes in their development and 
improvement, and no doubt more will come, but 
one thing I believe I did right at the outset, that 
was the percentage-of-profit basis upon which I 
set my men to work. A good farm worker must 
have a certain amount of intelligence, and with 
that intelligence, quite naturally, there is an am- 
bition for something more than ordinary farm 
wages, and the result is that good men are forever 
leaving the farms. 

I am speaking from personal experience. There 
may be any number of adverse opinions on the sub- 
ject, backed by actual experience, and I would not 
dispute them, but I have watched the experiment 
on my farm from the beginning as carefully as any 
other branch of the business, and I am satisfied 
that the money I pay out in the form of 5 per cent, 
commissions is one of the best investments I make. 

By way of illustration let me cite one instance: 
During my first year on the farm, when I had an 
overseer working on salary alone, the "incidentals 
and repairs" at the harness maker's amounted to 
$54.50. Since Frank Waters came into my em- 

106 



THAT FARM 

ploy, on a salary and commission basis, the bill at 
the same shop has been $6.75. Waters is no ex- 
traordinary man; he has no special gift from God. 
The same interest and economy is practised in the 
dairy by a man I drew out of an employment 
agency grab-bag. James Dolan is not sui generis; 
there are plenty more like him looking for a job 
with an opportunity in it, although they may not 
each possess so prominent a gold tooth nor such 
ready wit. 

One day I had the men spreading nitrate of soda 
and acid phosphate on the meadows. Waters 
walked back to the house with me and on the way 
he said: 

"Mr. Whittingham, we ought to have a vege- 
table garden this spring, a good sized one, and sell 
vegetables in the town." 

"Do you mean to sell to the butchers and green- 
grocers," I asked, "or to open a market of our 
own ? " 

"No, sir, I think we could supply every one of 
the dairy customers with vegetables and eggs at 
retail prices." 

That was one of my pet schemes, for when it is 
properly done it is a wonderfully profitable farm 
practice, especially where the produce can be sold 
directly to the consumer. Where one must sell to 
the marketmen it hardly pays to do market gar- 

107 



THAT FARM 

denlng on a small scale, because the dealers reserve 
too much of the profit for themselves. The margin 
of profit in vegetables for the green groceryman 
is surprisingly large in some cases, running as high 
as 600 per cent.! But my plan extended beyond 
the dairy customers and the village, into the city 
where I successfully carried it later on; it was grati- 
fying, however, to have the suggestion come from 
Frank Waters, so we took it up with the gardener. 
Weber's vocation was gardening. He enthused 
over the new project and the 5 per cent, interest 
that went with it. A poultry plant and a vege- 
table garden work very well together on a farm — ■ 
there is a lot of unsalable truck that can be fed 
advantageously to the chickens. Just south of 
the hennery there was a piece of land well suited 
for a garden; it contained about four acres and was 
apparently in good condition. I told Weber to 
start his garden there. He laid it out so as to do 
as much work as possible with a horse, and it proved 
a very good plan. Hand labor should be avoided 
on a farm wherever practicable, because it means 
a pay roll, and the pay roll wears day and night 
on profits. Weber and his wife recognized no 
union hours in their work; they were going from 
daylight until dark, and in a short time had an 
excellent garden under way. They planted sweet 
corn, cabbage, onions, beets, and such other vege- 

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THAT FARM 

tables as could be readily disposed of in the local 
market. No attempt was made to raise early 
vegetables until the following year, when we were 
better equipped for that purpose. 

After the crops are planted in the spring, there 
comes a period during the growing season when 
one can turn his attention profitably to other im- 
portant matters on the farm. I had a number of 
things in reserve for a threatened idle hour, so one 
day, when the men were cultivating corn, I took 
Waters and Layton with me to inspect the old mill. 
Layton, in reality, trailed along unbidden at Wa- 
ter's side. Waters was very good to the old man. 
He trimmed his hair and beard, brought him to- 
bacco of a brand that he liked (which really meant 
much, for Layton's two remaining teeth were de- 
cidedly out of gear), had Mrs. Waters keep his 
clothing in good repair, and did many other little 
things that served to make the last part of the 
way less bumpy. The old man was grateful and 
he leaned on the friendship of the big, good-hearted 
overseer. 

The mill was not as antiquated as I had sup- 
posed. The building contained two stories and a 
basement. In one end there was the relic of a 
sawmill, and in the basement some few remaining 
parts of a once good cider press. Various other 
parts of machinery were lying about, all of which 

109 



THAT FARM 

were more or less useless. On the main floor, in 
the centre of the building, there was a grinding 
mill, a corn-cob crusher, and a large corn sheller. 
The grinding mill needed only a new plate Inside 
to put It In working order; It had a capacity of two 
tons of meal a day. The other two machines were 
in fairly good condition. Originally, power had 
been supplied by an overshot wheel, but Layton 
informed us that when the lawyer. Ford, owned 
the property he discarded It and put in the 60- 
horsepower turbine we found there. The wheel 
was In good condition, but the pit In which It re- 
volved needed considerable repairing. At odd 
times during the summer Waters worked on the 
mill, and by fall he had it in shape for use. 

That mill has turned out to be a valuable asset 
of the farm. It grinds most of the feed for my 
stock, and a great many tons that are sold each 
year to my neighbors; It furnishes buckwheat and 
rye flour and corn meal for our table use; it saws 
fuel wood for my tenants; and it spins a dynamo 
that supplies my house and outbuildings with 
electricity for lighting and power purposes. 

Free power is a very valuable asset on a farm, 
especially when It is always available as It was in 
that water mill. In addition to enabling me to 
feed all my grain ground, it also insured pure un- 
adulterated feed. This last consideration is one that 

1 10 



THAT FARM 

must not be lost sight of, because It Is very clearly 
reflected in profit and loss. 

I was down in Leesburg, Virginia, a few years 
ago, and I inspected a number of farms in that 
beautiful country. Most of the farmers "fattened 
a few steers.'* On two farms not more than a 
quarter of a mile apart there was a marked differ- 
ence between the appearance of the stock. The 
ration fed was about the same, yet on one place 
the steers gained three quarters of a pound a day, 
while on the other the daily gain was nearly one 
and a half pounds. In the first case the stock 
were fed some brand of ground feed from a Minne- 
apolis mill; the second lot were fed grain that was 
grown and ground on the farm. 

The day we went to inspect the mill Layton not 
only explained its workings to us in detail, but he 
also gave us a complete history of it. All old mills 
have a history of some kind attached to them, es- 
pecially when they are abandoned, and although 
we were not particularly interested in that part of 
it, we listened to the old man with more or less 
patience. There was a small wagon bridge lead- 
ing from the road across the mill-pond dam up to 
the entrance of the building. In walking over it 
Layton stopped long enough to point out a spot 
where "Mr. Jim Bellair en * Billy Boy' used ter 
fish for perch." 

Ill 



THAT FARM 

The mention of ** Billy Boy" reminded me again 
of the letter I had received at one time from the 
conscience-stricken notary public In the village, 
and also of Uncle Tom Stevens's suggestion to have 
Layton tell me something about the original owner 
of the place and his child. I cared very little one 
way or another about authentic history of Mr. 
Bellair, but the possibility of a defect in the title 
to my farm had occurred to me very often since the 
receipt of that letter from Henry Welden, although 
I had made no effort to verify its contents. So 
that evening, In strolling about the place, I stopped 
to chat with old Layton in front of his cottage. 

In the course of our conversation I asked him 
about *' Billy Boy." The mention of the name 
seemed to carry the old man back to the most im- 
portant part of his life. Time stales the physical 
man into inactivity, but when the mind tires of 
its work it turns back for relief to the memories of 
other days, and frolics there in second childhood. 
There was very little to the story of Bellair's child, 
but old Layton seemed so willing to talk about 
him that I allowed him to ramble on uninterrupt- 
edly. 

"Billy Boy," I learned, was James Bellair's only 
child, and after a short life, replete with interest- 
ing incidents (to Layton), he died at the age of 
four years. 

112 



THAT FARM 

"Everything was all right," the old man said, 
'^till that little feller died; then the trouble started. 
Mr. Bellair was broke up pretty bad fer a spell; 
'cause he thought a heap o' that child. Then he 
started drinkin', en from then on all them things 
happened what people in the village tells about 
now. There wasn't no use fer him to get sober, 
'cause when he did he missed that boy same as the 
day he died. You know there wasn't nothing at 
home to comfort Mr. Jim Bellair, 'cause that wife 
o' his wasn't the right sort o' woman; no sir, she 
wasn't no good, but he always treated her nice en 
polite even when he was drunk. 

"Well, sir, that drinkin' en horse racin' en bet- 
tin' kept up fer close on to two years. The farm 
here just went to the devil, en it was a pity, 'cause 
there wasn't no finer place nowhere then this one. 
Then one day he quit drinkin' all of a sudden. He 
used to come out to the barn every mornin' en 
him en me w^ould drive off to get his drinks; but 
that mornin' he didn't come out till near noon, en 
the minute I see him I knew he was done for — his 
mind was gone. He got worse en worse after that, 
en one day I found him out in the barn pullin' the 
little feller's wagon up en down en laughin' en talk- 
in' to * Billy Boy,' same as if he was in it. 

"About that time some men I'd never seen be- 
fore come en looked over the farm, en the next I 

"3 



THAT FARM 

heard the place had been sold. Mr. Jim was in 
bed then, 'cause he'd got so they couldn't let him 
go round none, en I didn't believe he'd sold his 
farm. One evenin', 'bout this time, they come 
down here en said Mr. Bellair wanted to see me, 
so I went up to the house. Well, sir, when I went 
into that room he was a-layin' there terrible thin 
en weak, but you know his mind had come back 
to him same as it used to be. He gimme a bundle 
o' little things o' * Billy Boy's', a dress en a pair o' 
shoes en some things the little feller used to play 
with, en said to keep 'em, 'cause he said he was 
thinkin' o' goin' away soon en he didn't want 
nothin' to happen to 'em. 'Twasn't more'n a 
week from then that he was dead." 

"Was any one here except his wife when he died ?" 
I asked. 

"Yes," he said, "there was a brother o' Mrs. 
Bellair here. Leastways, she said he was her 
brother; I never seen him before." 

"Did you ever know a man named Welden — 
Henry Welden.?" 

"Sure I knew him. He died here 'bout a year 
or so ago. He was a real estate man in the village 
in them days." 

"Did he come out here to the farm shortly be- 
fore Mr. Bellair's death .? " 

"Yes, Mrs. Bellair's brother says to me one day 

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THAT FARM 

that I should go in en get Henry Welden, en I 
drove in, but he was away. I remember it was 
the Fourth o' July, en he'd gone fishin'. So I 
drove in the next evenin' en brought him out here, 
en he stayed for a while en I carried him back to 
town again.'* 

** What has ever become of Mr. Bellair's people ^ " 
I asked. 

"Well," he answered after puffing thoughtfully 
for a moment or two on his pipe, *^I guess they're 
'bout all died out. Mrs. Bellair never had no peo- 
ple, 'cause she was an orphan when Mr. Jim mar- 
ried her; he told me so one day; en all his people 
are gone, all 'ceptin' his brother's daughter. She 
married a man in town, en he died en left her with 
two children. She lives in a little house just back 
o' the school house en does washin' fer a livin'. 
You know Mr. Bellair's brother never had nothin' 
'ceptin' what Mr. Jim give him." 

"Thirty years," I thought, as I walked back to 
the house, and I wondered how many times the 
"hoodoo farm" had changed hands in that time. 



IIS 



CHAPTER XII 

IN WHICH I CONSIDER THE HEN WHILE CUPID 
STEALS INTO OUR KITCHEN 

WE ENLARGED our poultry plant that 
spring. From our previous year's experi- 
ence we learned that our facilities were 
inadequate and not entirely practical. It was a 
question of cutting down the chickens or increasing 
the plant. I had no idea of doing the former, 
because I am a great believer in the hen. You re- 
member, years ago out in Kansas, how they ele- 
vated the hog when he began prying mortgages 
off those Western farms .^^ He deserved the praise 
he got, true enough, but why is it that the hen has 
never had her true worth proclaimed abroad .f^ 
She reminds me of the strap-hanger in the subway 
— a hanger-on, but a dividend earner. 

I have a friend out in Kansas City, a millionaire 
many times over, who told me that his fortune be- 
gan in the poultry business. He was a boy on his 
father's farm, and with characteristic Western 

1x6 



THAT FARM 

thrift and energy they worked every avenue of 
income very thoroughly — too thoroughly at times 
to suit the children in the family, but the father 
was a great apostle of industry and he believed 
that the time to play was when you were too old 
to work. At any rate, he had chickens from which 
he derived no small income each year, for eggs and 
broilers were high out there at that time, and one 
day he sent this boy to **set a hen." 

**The old man gave me fifteen eggs," my friend 
said, in telling me of his birth in the financial world, 
"and sent me out to set that hen in the corn crib. 
It was a fine, warm day In May, and after I fixed 
the nest all up and put the hen on the eggs, I sat 
down on the edge of the box and watched her settle 
down to business. I wasn't any too anxious to 
get out into the cornfield to cultivate, for, as I re- 
member, I had a touch of spring fever. Anyhow, 
while I was sitting there watching that old hen 
tuck those eggs into place with her beak, I began 
to figure. A hen was worth $i. If she hatched 
twelve chicks out of the fifteen eggs, that would be 
^12 next year, and if those twelve hatched out a 
dozen apiece it would be 144 the second year. The 
third year there would be 1,728, and at ^i apiece 
the fourth year would mean twenty thou 

"All of a sudden I heard an awful cackling. I 
had dropped off to sleep and fallen over into the 

117 



THAT FARM 

nest on top of the hen. All but three of the fifteen 
eggs were broken, and when the old man came in 
to see what was keeping me and found out what 
had happened, he gave me a fanning that estab- 
lished a record for that section of Missouri. I got 
sore about it, my feelings, too, and I ran away from 
home and came to Kansas City. I got a job in a 
packing-house, and Fve been in the business ever 
since; so you see I can thank the hen for my start 
in life." 

Yet on that man's place, which covers about an 
acre in one of the most fashionable streets in Kan- 
sas City, he keeps White Wyandottes — a hundred 
of them — and when I asked him if he kept them 
for sentimental reasons he said, "Sentiment be 
darned. I keep them because they pay." 

Just east of the hennery there was an orchard, 
or, better, the relic of an orchard; apparently it had 
received nothing but neglect for a number of years, 
and that does not help fruit trees. It covered 
about two and a half acres and was an ideal place 
for growing chicks. We fenced it in with 5-foot 
wire netting, and along the north side built four 
long, low colony houses; each house was divided 
into twenty sections with small runways attached; 
each compartment was capable of accommodating 
twenty-five chicks. The young birds were put 
into the buildings as soon as they began to feather, 

118 



THAT FARM 

and when they reached the point when there was 
no longer danger ^rom crowding, the runways were 
thrown open and the birds were given the freedom 
of the orchard. 

Out of the previous year's crop we had reserved 
500 Plymouth Rocks for breeding purposes. From 
them we hatched 1,945 chicks, and from the Leg- 
horns and Columbian Wyandottes 950. The 
incubators were started in February and run 
until June. Three times a week the poultry houses 
were cleaned and disinfected by two of the Rus- 
sians, who worked under the scrutinizing eye of 
Mrs. Weber. 

The last week in June we commenced haying. 
We put three mowing-machines in the field. 
Waters drove one, Layton another, and, to satisfy 
a well-developed curiosity, I drove the third. It 
was my first experience, although I did not adver- 
tise the fact. It had always been interesting to 
me to watch a mowing-machine in the field, but I 
found it more so to operate one; there was some- 
thing fascinating about that 6-foot blade working 
its way through the timothy. After half a dozen 
rounds of the meadow, however, the romance of 
the harvest field was somewhat dulled, for there 
were no shock-absorbers on the machine. 

We cut our hay several days earlier that year 
than the other farmers in the neighborhood, and 

119 



THAT FARM 

when weather conditions were favorable we got It 
into the mow the same day it was cut. We follow 
that practice from year to year, and passing farm- 
ers always stop to give us this advice: "You're 
putting that hay away pretty green — she'll heat 
up on you, neighbor." It does "heat up" — we 
want it to — and when we take it out of the mow 
in winter there is no better colored hay in the 
county than ours. 

We finished haying about the middle of July, 
and toward the end of the month the oats were in 
condition to be cut. One evening, after dinner, I 
walked over to examine them. On the way back 
James Dolan met me. He held his cap in both his 
hands behind him. His usual straightforward man- 
ner had disappeared; he shifted his eyes ner- 
vously from the purple hills In the distance to the 
timothy stubble in which we were standing. 

"Mr. Whittlngham, I — er — er — there's — 
er " 

"Let it out, James. Has some one watered the 
milk, or kicked a hole in your delivery wagon, or 
what.?" 

"No, sir. It ain't that; I just wanted — er — to 
— you know — to tell you that I'm goin' to — 
ahem — goin' to get married to Nellie." 

It was as though utterance had absolved him of 
a weighty sin. He looked me straight in the eye 

1 20 



THAT FARM 

for judgment. Nellie Flannery was my wife's 
housemaid. 

**Well, If you have thought the matter over 
carefully and are satisfied that you are suited to 
each other, I think it is a very wise thing for you to 
do. I am a strong believer in people marrying 
young. Bachelors and spinsters don't make the 
world, but married people do. I suppose you will 
give up your position and go back to the city.?" 

"Oh, no, sir, not unless you want to fire me. 
Gee whiz, If It hadn't been for my job here I'd 'a' 
never thought of tying up with Nellie; if you and 
Mrs. Whittingham don't mind, we'll keep on work- 
in' same as we're doin' now." 

My wife felt toward Nellie Flannery much the 
same as I felt toward James Dolan, and a little 
thing like matrimony would never cost them their 
positions with us. 

" When had you thought of getting married ^ " 

** We thought we'd try and pull it off the end of 
August if we could." 

"All right, James; if I can do anything for you 
let me know." 

"Thank you, sir. Good night." 

The oats did not grow very tall that season, but 
they headed out better than I expected; the old 
cornfield in which they were planted needed more 
than one year's help to boost It Into the "highly 

121 



THAT FARM 

productive" class. That particular piece of land 
was known to the neighboring farmers as a field 
that ** never did much"; I made them change their 
views about it within the following two years. In 
most instances that expression *' never did much" 
should not be applied to the soil, but to the farmer. 
We finished reaping our oats early in August. 
Mine was the only reaper and binder in the neigh- 
borhood, and after our work was finished I sent the 
machine around to harvest the crops for other 
farmers; only one man went with the reaper, the 
farmers furnishing their own labor to stack up the 
bundles. We received $2 an acre for the work, 
and the machine cut ten acres a day; it was out for 
two weeks. 

I cut 105 acres of oats that season, exclusive of 
my own, and received $210 for the work. The 
reaper and binder cost $125. I suggested to Uncle 
Tom Stevens that he buy a machine and do as I 
had done. He had the horses on his farm and 
there was no great amount of work for them to do 
at that season of the year. He could more than 
pay for his machine the first year, and the follow- 
ing years the work would show him a nice profit 
for the time spent at it. 

"No," he said, "if I do that, like as not there 
won't nobody plant oats that year." 

There is a dull season in every business, and 

122 



THAT FARM 

farming is no exception, even though Its slow 
period lasts for a very short time. In the hot 
August days it seems natural to sit down and take 
life easy, while the corn grows. 

That year, however, a great deal of interest and 
activity centred in the approaching nuptials of 
James and Nellie. Both were members of the 
same faith, and Mrs. Whittingham arranged with 
the priest at the church in the village where they 
attended services for the performance of the wed- 
ding ceremony on the 27th of August, at four in 
the afternoon. She had her seamstress make a 
very pretty gown for the bride to be, and the vil- 
lage tailor shaped a frock coat of mine into the 
wedding garb of James Dolan. Mrs. Waters was 
matron of honor, and her husband acted as best 
man. Nellie Flannery had no relatives nearer 
than Sundays Wells, a suburb of Cork, so I gave 
the bride away. No cards were required at the 
church door, and the edifice was packed to per- 
spiration on that August afternoon. 

After the ceremony was performed, the bride 
and groom made a detour of the village in a hack, 
and then returned to the farm, where a dinner was 
served on the lawn. As with the other details of 
the wedding, my wife allowed nothing to be omit- 
ted from that dinner. In addition to all the em- 
ployees on the farm, ten of James Dolan's friends 

123 



THAT FARM 

from the village were invited to attend. Old Lay- 
ton appeared to be particularly pleased and inter- 
ested at the entire proceeding. He sat in the front 
pew in the church and smiled most disrespectfully 
when James moulted his celibacy. At the dinner 
he was one of the chief merry-makers, in spirit if 
not in voice. Toward the end of their feast I went 
over to the table and proposed that they all rise 
and drink Layton's toast to the bride. He bent 
his head in temporary embarrassment, then raised 
his glass toward the bride and said: 

"May you live to see your great grandson turn 
flip-flops for his youngest son's children." 

A week later, when the old man stopped to oil 
his mowing machine in the buckwheat field I heard 
him humming, "Here comes the bride.'* 



124 



CHAPTER XIII 

IN WHICH I COME TO KNOW TOM STEVENS AND 

BEN HIGHLAND BETTER, AND GET THE FARM 

ON A PAYING BASIS 

IF THE day Is a pleasant one and traffic on the 
country road is not congested, the farmer you 
chance to meet may, if he knows you, stop to 
idle away a little time in conversation. He will 
talk about little things as a rule — a colt, the 
chickens, or the cattle, and generally of some mis- 
fortune attending them. Farmers seldom rate 
good fortune a blessing because they think it be- 
longs in their life; but how they resent disappoint- 
ment even though, as is too often the case, it is 
born of their blunders. But, after all, the little 
things he talks about are the things his life is made 
up of, they are really big from his standpoint; and 
the apparently simple expression of his views may, 
after all, widen our angle of observation, and there 
is something in that. Unless you are in a hurry to 
catch a train or to keep an important engagement, 
it is wise to linger a few moments at his wagon hub 

125 



THAT FARM 

or you may be judged unneighborly, and that Is a 
mortal sin in the country. The average farmer's 
sphere is not a large one; away from his home vil- 
lage he is an uncomfortable stranger, and the work- 
ings of the outside world are, for the most part, 
mysteries which he accepts in silence. So, when 
he hails you on the highway and makes you an ac- 
complice in his larceny of time, it is because of a 
human instinct that craves companionship. 

One September afternoon I was driving into the 
village when I met old Uncle Tom Stevens on his 
way home. His horses needed only a suggestion 
to make them stop, for they were laboring with a 
ton of feed that was piled on top of the empty milk 
cans in his wagon. "Uncle Tom" was one of the 
tax assessors. He was also an ever ready critic of 
my farm practices, but my faults seemed to find 
forgiveness in the memory of that house-warming 
we had the Christmas after I bought my farm; he 
has never forgotten that dinner, and apparently 
never will. 

"Started cuttin' corn yet.^" he inquired after 
we had exchanged greetings in no soft pedal tones 
of friendship. 

"Yes, we commenced yesterday morning." 

"I don't care nothin' for that machine you use, 
it knocks too many cobs off." 

"Well," I said, "it is not much trouble to send 

126 



THAT FARM 

a wagon along afterward and pick up the few ears 
that are knocked off, and you must bear in mind 
that with the machine I cut about ten times as 
much corn in a day as you do." 

"Yes, that's all right, I know, but — say, I was 
talkin' to old Blake this mornin' in the bank. 
*Tom,' he says, *how you makin' out with your 
assessin'.^' 'Pretty good,' says I, * we're about 
through.' 'I suppose,' says he, 'you've grasped 
the full value of the energy and activity of that city 
man up your way who's goin' to revolutionize 
farmin' with dry-goods ideas .^' 'Well,' says I, 
'I can't see where the paintin' and fixin' what he's 
done to his place adds a sight to its value, and he's 
assessed now fer $25,000, and I don't know as his 
farm would fetch that much at public sale. Them 
fellers up on the new State Road, though, appears 
to be in a little better shape than they was, so we 
jacked 'em up a bit this year. Your brotherHenry 
was fit to be tied when he found we'd tacked $5,000 
on to him." 

"How's old Lay ton gettin' along .f"' he continued, 
after pausing to light his pipe. "Say, like as not 
that old feller would 'a' starved to death if you 
hadn't come along when you did. He's got a 
nephew over here in Riggsville that done him an 
onery trick once. Layton had $1,700 saved up 
and that nephew of his'n come along one day and 

127 



THAT FARM 

borrowed It off him. He give him a ninety-day 
note fer it. That's close to sixteen years ago and, 
durn his skin, you know he ain't never paid the old 
man yet. Layton has that note to this day, carry- 
in' it round in an old pocket-book inside his vest — 
it's worn in three pieces from the old man foldin' 
and unfoldin' it. He thinks that nephew's goin' to 
pay him, but he ain t ! Durn his skin, he's crooked 
as a bed spring, that feller. Well, here comes one 
of them automobiles, guess we'll have to let it by. 
Good day. Say, goin' to have any stalks to sell.?" 

"Yes, plenty of them. Good-bye." 

I drove on in the September sunshine, better off 
for my few minutes' talk with ^' Uncle Tom. " 

We have grown to be close friends and I am 
grateful to him for many an hour that he has made 
pleasant for me. In the midst of all my agricul- 
tural activity I have managed to steal away occa- 
sionally to a neighbor's dividing fence and chat 
with him from the top rail. Tom Stevens is just a 
plain old countryman, but he Is honest and sincere, 
and in my ripening years I find those virtues 
fragrant 

So long as our conversation is about matters 
that do not pertain to farming we drift along in 
perfect congeniality, but if by chance I begin to 
talk shop we seem to strike conflicting currents at 
once. He has told me many a time that I need 

128 



THAT FARM 

never hope to make money in the country so long 
as I wear a white shirt during the week on the farm; 
and if I happen to meet him while I am out for a 
horseback ride he will lecture me first about my 
riding boots, and *^pass the time of day" afterward. 
I like to drive in the fall, for to me it is the most 
enjoyable season of the year. It is harvest time; 
the time when there is no longer conjecture, but 
bushels and pounds to tell the story of the year's 
work. There is an element of chance in husbandry 
with which the farmer must contend. Modern 
methods, 'tis true, enable the farmer to cope suc- 
cessfully with most of the evils that beset his fore- 
fathers, but nature still holds some hazards for the 
agriculturist, to remind him, perhaps, that the 
sweat of his brow is still the price. Science has 
taught us to cultivate some of the hurt out of 
drought, but when the fields are unremittingly 
''sun kissed" for a month or six weeks during the 
summer, granaries don't bulge in the fall. Nor 
can we control the hurricane that levels the stand- 
ing crops, and the early frost that sears the corn. 
But the drought and the tornado are summer visit- 
ors when they do come, and if the corn-harvester 
beats the frost, as it generally does, then the farmer 
may figure with a reasonable degree of certainty, 
for he has gotten his business past the danger point. 
With him his work for the year is about completed. 

129 



THAT FARM 

He has the satisfaction of knowing that after manu- 
facturing his products he does not have to manu- 
facture a market for them. The fattened beef, 
the bushel of corn, the barrel of potatoes are all 
necessary to keep the cities working, to keep them 
alive. There was a time when the prices of these 
things were so low that there was little in the har- 
vest to make the farmer happy, but that day has 
gone. I can remember when they used corn for 
fuel out in Kansas, and I can also remember hear- 
ing the country groan when the corn crop was 
800,000,000 bushels short. It is the harvest of the 
farmer nowadays that shapes the business course 
of the nation. 

That is why the fall of the year is so pleasant 
to me. Of course there are other things about the 
autumn that I might mention — things not wholly 
commercial. For example, there is the effect of 
the cool, crisp air on the digestive organs of an ex- 
dry-goods man — but perhaps I had better avoid 
details of an appetite that makes my youthful 
proclivities in that regard seem dyspeptic by com- 
parison. 

We were ten days cutting our corn; the teams 
were changed each day because even with three 
horses the corn-harvester is by no means an easy 
running machine. The husking was done almost 
entirely by outside labor. I gave the contract to 

130 







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■»-» • — 

"5b o 

* >. 

bors 

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CO <-M 

*- S 

O rt 
u 

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o 
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THAT FARM 

one man who pressed all his family and relatives 
into service on the work; they husked 5,254 shocks, 
for which I paid them at the rate of 8 cents a 
shock. Our stock was fed fodder through the 
winter, and over and above our own requirements 
we had 1,600 shocks which were sold. 

Before commencing to plow that fall we covered 
the land with muck which we hauled from a ravine 
back of the mill. The mill stream ran through 
the centre of the ravine, which was very heavily 
wooded, and the deposit of decayed leaves and 
other vegetable matter there was more than four 
feet deep in some places. I have hauled hundreds 
of loads of that muck out on to my land since I first 
discovered its usefulness; in connection with it I 
use raw chemicals for fertilizing. 

The cornfields were seeded down in rye and 
timothy, except five acres for soiling purposes, 
which were seeded with rye and clover. The 
meadows were turned under and allowed to remain 
through the winter. Wheat was planted where 
the potatoes and mangels had been. So much for 
fall plowing and planting. 

When the last of the corn was husked, we had 
8,925 bushels; in addition to that we had 2,275 
bushels of oats, 740 bushels of buckwheat, 280 
bushels of wheat, and 1,850 bushels of soy beans. 
From the five acres of potatoes we got 487 bushels, 

131 



THAT FARM 

and the three acres of mangels produced about 
thirty tons. 

It was a splendid market for grain there among 
those cattle men. They all had silos, but scarcely 
one raised more than a scant supply of oats 
and corn — hardly enough to carry their horses 
through the winter. All the grain for the cattle 
was bought. I was astonished to learn that the 
annual consumption of dried brewery grains alone, 
within a radius of six miles of the milk factory, 
was 8,000 tons. 

I could never quite understand the business 
methods of most of the farmers in my neighbor- 
hood. Almost without exception they kept cattle 
for the purpose of producing milk for the factory. 
The average daily milk yield of a cow is 7f quarts, 
or 31 cents. The average daily cost of feed is 17 
cents. In reckoning the productiveness of a cow I 
have taken into consideration milking cows, young 
stock, and dry cattle. In arriving at the cost of 
feeding I have borne in mind the pasturing season. 
My figures are based upon information received 
from ten representative farms in the neighborhood, 
averaging 133 acres and 42 head of stock. That 
gross annual income of ^2,146.20 stands against 
charges for labor, taxes, insurance, interest, and 
living for the farmer and his family. Is it any 
wonder that bank balances don't grow, that 

132 



THAT FARM 

drudgery continues, and that the farmer does not 
progress ? 

I do not mean to suggest any criticism of dairy 
farming, because it is very interesting and profit- 
able when properly conducted, but if the efficiency 
of the herd were more carefully looked after, and 
the cost of feeding reduced by devoting more 
care and acreage to the raising of grain, annual 
profits with most dairymen would be increased 
about 300 per cent. 

There was a good demand for all the ground 
feed I could turn out of my mill, so I put in another 
grinding machine and started it to work. I found 
the cattle did remarkably well on a mixture of corn 
and cob meal 50 per cent., wheat bran 25 per cent., 
and ground soy beans 25 per cent. 

In November that year dressed pork was selling 
at nine and three fourths and ten cents. The local 
butchers advised me to wait until January or Feb- 
ruary before commencing to kill, because they 
thought the price would advance further, but ten 
cents is an attractive price for pork and I was satis- 
fied with it. The butchers were not bad prophets, 
however, for the price went to twelve and one half 
cents in February. Hog killing is not the most 
esthetic operation on a farm, but as David Knapp 
and his three mountain-grown sons do the work, it 
is at least interesting. I had a nice lot of hogs 

133 



THAT FARM 

that season, 120 to be marketed, and Waters 
thought they would average about 130 pounds 
dressed. We were down in the pens where the 
men were getting twenty-five hogs ready for Knapp 
and his boys to begin work on. 

"Knapp will be here at seven in the morning," 
Waters said, "to start killing. He ought to have 
them all cleaned up by Friday. I saw Milligan in 
the village, he tells me they are going to have a 
chicken fight out here Saturday night; did he say 
anything to you about it?" 

"A chicken fight .^ Out where .^" I asked. 

"In the mill. He tells me they always had 
them there up to a few years ago, then they went 
over to Palmer's barn; but now that it's burned 
down they're coming back here." 

"Who attends these fights ? " I asked. 

"There's a crowd coming over from Dunton, I 
understand, with some birds, and then most of the 
sports from the village will be there. I hear that 
they do some big betting on the chickens." 

" Doesn't the sheriff try to stop it .? " 

"He never knows anything about it until the 
next day, and then what can he do.^ These fellers 
round here don't seem to think there's any harm in 
cock-fighting; a whole lot of them raises game 
chickens." 

"Don't say a word to any one, Waters, but you 

134 



THAT FARM 

and I will attend that chicken fight Saturday 
night." 

I try to be public spirited, and I don't think my 
morals are chamois strained, but there are some 
things that make me curl up like a cold puppy — 
one of them is cock-fighting. I could never find 
any excuse for it. That evening, after dinner, I 
called "Salem 84" on the 'phone. 

*^ Hello, is Mr. Highland there.?" 

"Yes, he's on the phone." 

"Oh, hello, Mr. Sheriff! this is Mr. Whittingham. 
I would like very much to have you come out to 
dine with me Saturday evening." 

"Let's see! I've got to go over to Dent's Bluff 
in the afternoon, but I ought to be back by four — 
sure, I'd be delighted." 

" If you don't mind just keep it quiet. I'll drive 
in for you about six o'clock. Good-bye." 

"What on earth do you want the sheriff for.?" 
my wife asked. 

"Oh, just to look over some cattle with me." 
Is he a cattle expert.?" she inquired. 
Yes, in the particular breed I have reference 
to.^ 

Ben Highland was a big, angular, interesting 
individual to whom living was, apparently, a real 
pleasure. His badge of office never weighed so 
heavily on him as to become burdensome, and it 

13s 



ti 



THAT FARM 

was not worn on the lapel of his coat. Of course 
he fully appreciated the duties of his position and 
he performed them conscientiously, but he had 
very little material to work on. 

The wisdom of the countryman manifests Itself 
very forcibly in his aversion to the law and its dis- 
astrous entanglements. There is only one "Mr. 
Counsellor" in our town, and while I would not 
think of reflecting In any way on his credit, I am 
afraid his capital Is none too elaborate; his expres- 
sion doesn't Indicate It. 

Mrs. Whittlngham received the sheriff most gra- 
ciously, but there was a certain reserve in her man- 
ner that came from timidity in the presence of an 
officer of the law. She had never been in such 
close contact with a sheriff before; In fact, I don't 
think she had ever seen one, and no doubt she ex- 
pected to find him bristling with firearms, hand- 
cuffs, and leg-irons. But the sheriff was a friend 
maker, and my wife's reserve was short-lived. 

"You've got a fine place out here, Mrs. Whlt- 
tingham," he remarked, as we sat down to dinner; 
" how do you like it .^ " 

"Very much. Indeed," she replied. 

"I haven't been out this way," he continued, 
** since Weaver lived down on the next farm. You 
don't remember the Weavers.^ No, of course not, 
that was before you came here. Old man Weaver 

136 



THAT FARM 

was sick for a long time, and Reverend Horsefield 
used to drop in now and then to see him. The dom- 
inie was terribly absent-minded. When Weaver 
finally died the Reverend Horsefield performed the 
burial service over the remains down here in OakHiU 
Cemetery. About a month or two later he hap- 
pened along the road and saw Mrs. Weaver at her 
gate. He hauled up his horse and leaned out from 
under the buggy top. * How's your husband.^' he 
asked. 'Just as you left him,' the widow replied. 
Poor Mrs. Weaver she sort of grew sour on things 
generally. She told me one day that she never 
saw such a place in her life for people borrowing 
things; first it was a wagon, then a horse rake, or a 
dump-cart, or a churn, or a few cups and saucers, 
till finally her patience gave out one afternoon 
when Mrs. Bailey's little girl came over and said; 
^Mrs. Weaver, mamma says won't you please lend 
her a pie.^' That seemed to be the last straw, for 
she moved away not long after. I believe she's 
living out in Iowa now with a brother, or like as not 
she wished herself dead and her wish came true, for 
it wasn't any fun to her to be alive. 

"You've made a lot of changes in the place," he 
went on reflectively. "I'm afraid if Jim Bellair 
could come back he would hardly recognize his old 
home. There was a funny sort of an individual; 
to hear about him nowadays you'd think he was 

137 



THAT FARM 

the most dissolute devil-may-care cuss that ever 
lived, but that wasn't a fact. You know, the only- 
things that sprout up out of a man's grave are his 
sins; his virtues stay down in the box with him. If 
all the people that Jim Bellair helped around this 
town would speak up in defence of him, the scandal 
mongers wouldn't be able to get a word in edge- 
wise. His father didn't put him up here on this 
farm because he was cutting up too much in the 
city. The boy might have had his share of fun in 
town, but his father really sent him here because 
of his health; some said his lungs were in bad shape, 
but I don't know about that. Everything was all 
right with Jim Bellair until he lost his child; then 
he went all to pieces." 

I think my wife rather resented it when I took 
the sheriiT into the library to smoke. 

"Sheriif," I said, "there is a chicken fight going 
on at present in my mill. I understand there is a 
crowd there from Dunton, and a number of men 
from our own town. Now I don't care about 
having any of them arrested if you can avoid 
it, but I do want to try and break up this vicious 
sport." 

About nine o'clock we joined Waters and came 
up to the mill from the ravine side. The windows 
had been carefully curtained with bags and blan- 
kets and the light from inside shone here and there 

138 



THAT FARM 

through cracks In the siding. A number of horses 
and vehicles were tied about under the trees. 
While we stood outside I occasionally heard a 
sharp voice squeaking from upstairs: "Fifty on 
the Brass Back. Fifty to twenty-five on the Brass 
Back." That voice sounded familiar to me — I 
had heard it somewhere before. We went into the 
building through the basement and started upstairs. 
On the second floor the sheriff tripped over a hic- 
kory split bushel basket. There was a moment of 
dead silence above, then pandemonium reigned. 
It was only a short drop from the second floor to 
the ground on the front side of the building, and 
through the windows and the large double doorway 
most of the "sports" escaped. The lights had 
been extinguished at the first intimation of danger, 
and when we forced open the door everything was 
in darkness. Waters struck a match and lighted a 
lantern that we found on the floor. There were 
three men left in the room who apparently did not 
care to risk the second-story window exit; they 
were Milligan, the livery stable keeper, Byrne, who 
ran the Eastern Cafe, and my distinguished friend, 
Mr. Frederick Blake, president of the bank. Milli- 
gan was not particularly disturbed — I am afraid 
that he was not overburdened with respect for the 
law anyhow; Byrne laughed (fat men always do); 
and Blake gazed straight out ahead over the beams 

139 



THAT lARM 

from his ponderous diamond; not a word came from 
him, but his face was a study. 

On the way back to the house the sheriflf said: 
"I ought to have run them in just for a joke." 
Then, after a long pause: "I'll bet old Blake cuts 
me on the way home from church to-morrow.'' 

Chicken fighting is still a popular pastime with 
the *' sporting" element in the village, but most of 
the meetings, I am told, are held in the vicinity of 
Dunton. 

I sold all my hay and grain on the farm at ^i a 
ton less than the prevailing price in the village for 
those things. I could not afiford to deliver it for 
$1 a ton, and the reduced price enabled me to dis- 
pose of it quickly. To a great many farmers it 
also meant a saving of a mile and a half in the haul- 
ing distance, and they were not slow in appreciating 
that fact. By the end of December such prod- 
uce as I had to sell had been disposed of and I 
closed my books for the year. The farm's receipts 
were as follows : 

7,800 bu. corn and cob meal, at ^28.50 per ton $ 3,890.25 

1,500 bu. soy beans, at ^1.95 per bu. . . . 2,850.00 

2,000 bu. ground oats, at $28.50 per ton . . . 1,026.00 

135 tons hay, at $24.50 per ton 3)307-50 

120 dressed hogs, 15,840 lbs., at 9fc per pound. 1,544.40 

120 hog plucks, at 40c each 48,00 

5,040 doz. eggs, at 25c per doz 1,260.00 

140 



THAT FARM 

965 dressed chickens, at 50c each 482.50 

300 Leghorn pullets, at 75c each 225.00 

Garden truck 432.50 

Reaping 105 acres oats, at $2 per acre .... 210.00 

32 tons straw, at $16.25 per ton 520.50 

11,360 bundles fodder, at 3c per bundle . . . 340.80 

1,627 lbs. dressed meat, at 15c per pound. . . 244.05 

43,890 quarts milk, at 8c a quart 3,511.20 

Total $19,892.70 



EXPENDITURES 

Wages: 4 Russians, at $25 each per month . $ 1,200.00 

Frank Waters, at $50 per month 600.00 

James Dolan, at $30 per month 360.00 

Weber and wife, at $40 per month .... 480.00 

Keep of 5 men at $12 per month each .... 720.00 

Fertilizer 687.49 

Husking corn . . . 420.32 

Butchering 120 hogs, at 50c each 60.00 

8 tons hog feed, at $13 per ton 104.00 

Milk delivery wagon 125.00 

Dairy incidentals 28.50 

Installing rams 184.50 

Taxes 250.00 

Insurance 325.00 

Incidentals 145.00 

James Dolan's commission, 5 per cent. . . . 175-56 

Charles Weber's commission, 5 per cent. . . . 102.08 
Ten per cent, depreciation of $10,226.50 stock 

and equipment 1,022.65 

141 



THAT FARM 

Five per cent, interest on investment of ^28,250 1,412.50 



^8,402.60 
Frank Waters' commission, 5 per cent. . . . 574-30 



Total $8,976.90 

On New Year's Day I gave the men checks for 
their respective interests in the farm's profits. 



142 



CHAPTER XIV 

IN WHICH MY SON JUNIOR INTRODUCES US TO A 

NEW INDUSTRY DOGS; AND IN WHICH 

THE ANGELS OF BIRTH AND DEATH 
VISIT THE FARM 

POOR old Layton! Perhaps there Is little 
in the passing of a worn-out old man that 
belongs in the annals of a business farm, 
but when death comes among us here in the sun- 
shine we feel it more than you do whose lives are 
set in the claws of a metropolis, for in the midst of 
happiness unknown in the city we look upon life as 
a right, and the good and the beautiful are not ob- 
scured by a constant thought of the time when we 
shall see them no more. 

One Saturday, late in January, Waters found 
the old man ill. There was nothing in particular 
wrong, or right, with him; just a general collapse, 
or, as the doctor expressed it, ''the machinery was 
worn out." For two days the old man wandered 
about the world in delirium, sailing the seas in a 
merchantman, cutting up high jinks in Chinese 

143 



THAT FARM 

ports, trading on the African coast, henchman of 
the unfortunate James Bellair in his skyrocket 
career, and recipient of the kindness of Frank 
Waters. On Monday evening he opened his eyes 
and looked about the room; he was tired, too tired 
to speak, but he made a feeble effort to offer us his 
hand, which we took in turn; then he smiled and 
went to sleep. 

Among the old fellow's effects we found the 
stained ninety-day note for $1,700, worn into three 
pieces just as Uncle Tom Stevens had described it, 
and also a small cotton tobacco sack containing 
forty-eight cents. During his short illness I had 
sent word to such of his relatives as I could locate, 
advising them of his condition, but none came to 
see him. I turned the sack of small coins over to 
the public administrator and explained to him the 
circumstances. Then I had published in three 
different town papers an account of the death of 
Layton Davidson, stating, among other things, the 
fact that the public administrator was in possession 
of a bag of money that had been found secreted in 
the old man's room. 

Just twenty-eight relatives appeared and quar- 
reled for the right to do honor to the dead. The 
nephew from Riggsville finally convinced the others 
that he was the old man's next of kin. He had the 
remains placed in a black cloth coffin that cost 

144 



THAT FARM 

^125, the body was taken In a hearse to Riggsville 
and, accompanied by six hacks and a number of 
other vehicles, was driven to the village cemetery 
and decently buried. Then the nephew, grief- 
stricken and in mourning, applied to the public 
administrator for the bag of money. It was handed 
over to him without any tedious formalities of 
law. 

Coming into the country as I had done, overflow- 
ing with commercial ideas about farming, it was 
only natural that my early impressions of Layton 
Davidson were not the best. He was an old man 
when I first saw him, tottering about under the 
load of his years, supported by a hickory stick. 
He came to me with the farm. Whatever senti- 
mental reasons his right of occupancy was based 
upon made no particular impression upon me, but 
his very helplessness made him secure in his posi- 
tion. When we came to know each other better, 
however, I found that the old man was by no 
means an incubus; he proved a help to me, and I 
owe a great deal to his memory. Familiar as he 
was with all branches of farming, although I con- 
sidered them old-school methods and at the pres- 
ent time impractical, I was able to learn some 
things from him that I might otherwise have had 
to purchase by costly experience. He was a sort 
of bell-buoy marking hidden difficulties that I 

145 



THAT FARM 

avoided. He was loyal and grateful always, and 
whether a man be prince or pauper we regret to 
see the ending of a life that has owned those cardi- 
nal virtues. 

During my several years of farming I had 
watched with a great deal of interest, naturally, 
the growth and development of my boys. Not- 
withstanding that they were the chief cause of my 
coming to the country when I did, I have written 
nothing about them because there is little worth 
recording in the youthful period of the average 
boy's life, and they were only average boys. They 
had been through college, two at Yale, one at 
Princeton, and the youngest was in Annapolis. 
Their holidays had for the most part been spent on 
the farm, and whatever impressions they gained 
of the life were the result entirely of their own ob- 
servation and experience. I gave them every op- 
portunity, unhampered both in the matter of their 
education and the selection of their vocations, 
because they were well-balanced boys. I believe 
a man, not driven by necessity, will choose best 
for himself in such matters. He will be guided by 
the heart as well as the head, and that is the basis 
of success in any undertaking. 

The youngest boy had been a sailor from child- 
hood — the navy was second nature with him. 
Two of the others had chosen professions, law and 

146 



THAT FARM 

medicine, but the last one, second in years, by the 
way, although he had figured rather prominently 
in athletics at Princeton, showed no anxiety to 
break into the business or professional world. Si- 
lently I had nursed a hope that they might develop 
an inclination for the life I had labored through so 
many years to find, and fruition, if it was to be, 
rested in the Princeton "tackle." He was my 
namesake and from childhood had been called 
"Junior," while I had been to him, for several 
years, "Senior," He spent six months abroad 
after leaving college, and after his return home 
had appeared quite contented on the farm. His 
propensity seemed at first to be toward the life of a 
"country gentleman," but I soon learned that his 
gallops cross-country and into the villages near by 
were the excursions of a "good mixer." It was 
not long before he had friends in quarters where I 
had scarcely a speaking acquaintance. Then, too, 
he was observing. One day he said to me : 

"Senior, there are some very necessary things 
lacking on this farm." 

"I have no doubt of it," I answered; "but, for 
example.^" 

"Why, dogs," he replied. "This is the first 
place I ever saw in the country where there was 
none, and there are coveys of birds everywhere 
you turn." 

147 



THAT FARM 

True enough, there was not a dog on the place, 
and there had not been since I took it. That was 
the irritating vacancy that I had never been able 
to locate. But it was not long before Junior went 
about companioned by two idolatrous Irish setters, 
six months old and generously endowed with legs 
and feet. He had entered into a compact with a 
friend of mine, who was an ardent sportsman and a 
breeder of those dogs, whereby title to the pups 
passed to Junior in exchange for some promised 
fall shooting. 

Dogs and coveys of birds! What memories 
they brought back to me of ^' Faust,'' and "Bow," 
and " Bang Bang," and " Sensation," and the hunt- 
ing grounds near Chetopah, and Abilene, and Car- 
thage. I had not pulled a trigger in thirty years, 
but the spell of it all came back to me, and I looked 
forward to the following hunting season with the 
enthusiasm and impatience of a boy — I evrn 
helped Junior break those two setter pups. 

That was another thing I was rapidly learning. 
In the pursuit of business in the country one may 
be surrounded by pleasures; or, in other words, 
work and play at the same time. For example, 
the directing of tilling or planting can be done 
most effectively from the back of a thoroughbred 
hunter, and one can, if he chooses, inspect the hogs 
or supervise the dairy work and enjoy his dogs at 

148 



THAT FARM 

the same time, although I must admit the calves 
and the setters are not prone to affiliate. 

In analyzing the results of the previous year's 
farm work I found that my profits had in some in- 
stances been much less than they should have been 
because of the middleman. For example, the prod- 
ucts of Weber's garden were sold at from loo to 
300 per cent, less than the prices paid by the con- 
sumer. Beets and carrots were sold to the local 
marketmen for three cents a bunch, and they In 
turn retailed them for ten cents; cantaloupes sold 
by us for five cents each were retailed for fifteen 
cents; tomatoes for which we got twenty-five 
cents a basket were sold for seventy-five cents; and 
so with other things. 

The saving of a few cents on a bunch of beets or 
a basket of tomatoes may not appear to be of any 
great Importance on a farm, and in the year's total 
of receipts there would be no particular addition to 
profits as a result of it, but If that same percentage 
of saving could be maintained In all the depart- 
ments of the business — and they all seemed to 
admit of It — there would be a material increase 
in revenue even though I did nothing to improve 
the productiveness of my land. The extra profit 
of the part of a cent on a spool of thread or a penny 
or two on a yard of dress-goods had been matters 
of great concern to me in the dry-goods business? 

149 



THAT FARM 

and by watching them carefully and constantly I 
had made the business pay; so why should not the 
saving of those same pennies on beets, tomatoes, 
etc., be just as important to me on my farm? 
They will tell their own story later on from the 
credit side of Profit and Loss, where I have tried 
to gather them by guarding the details of my busi- 
ness. The disposition of produce has been just as 
important to me as the raising of it, and unless this 
first item is to be carefully watched over it is a 
waste of time to turn the first furrow in the spring. 

There were none of the obstacles that existed in 
the city to prevent us from dealing directly with 
the consumer, so we concluded to do it by running 
a produce wagon of our own in the village. Weber 
had put in elaborate hotbeds and coldframes, the 
first plowing was done in his garden, and the vege- 
table feature of the farm business bade fair to 
amount to something. The previous year he had 
put out 5,000 asparagus plants; in his opinion it 
was the most profitable garden crop, and I think 
he was correct. 

Early garden truck pays wonderfully well in 
comparison with the later vegetables. In a town 
many people have little gardens of their own dur- 
ing the season, enough to supply their tables for 
six weeks or two months, but they do not under- 
take to raise early vegetables. They are eager to 

150 



THAT FARM 

get them, however, and unhesitatingly pay good 
prices for them. It is the same with winter cab- 
bage and potatoes; we supply more than fifty fam- 
ilies with them every year. 

I hired a helper for Weber in the spring who was 
to assist him in the garden and drive the wagon 
through the selling season; his wages were ^20 a 
month. He was a young man of Weber's nation- 
ality, and while he knew that he was under the su- 
pervision of Frank Waters, at the same time his 
orders came from Weber, or more often from Mrs. 
Weber, and they were religiously obeyed. 

Seldom have I seen a more beautiful spring than 
we had that year. Winter disappeared with the 
snow and by the first of March the frost was almost 
entirely out of the ground, then followed some 
bright soft days that put the soil in splendid condi- 
tion for tillage. An early start in spring is a won- 
derful help to all farm crops, for they are better 
able to withstand adverse conditions later in the 
season if they have been well nourished in the be- 
ginning. The incubators had worked industri- 
ously and well during the late winter, and the fuzzy 
results of their efi'orts were very apparent in the 
warm spring sunshine. The hens, too, seemed to 
share the good feeling that was in the air, for the 
hennery was a pandemonium of cackling. 

Our first crop of colts came in March; of the ten 



THAT FARM 

mares we had bred, eight foaled, and they were a 
handsome lot of colts — short backed, well limbed, 
and full of the life and vigor of the sire. Of the 
thirty outside mares that were bred, twenty-two 
foaled. The owners of seventeen of them asked 
to be allowed to keep their colts; I waived my right 
of option and they each paid me a stud fee of 
$15. I was disappointed in not getting the colts, 
but I was glad to see a manifested interest in breed- 
ing. 

We commenced plowing on the 12th of March. 
The fields we had turned under in the fall we plowed 
again instead of using a cut harrow. In the 100 
acres of turned under meadows, and also in the old 
soy bean field, we planted corn, fertilizing as we 
had done the year previous, except in the bean 
field where we omitted the nitrate; 55 acres were 
planted in oats following corn and buckwheat; 25 
acres in buckwheat; and 3 acres in mangels. Our 
crops came up in excellent shape, particularly the 
corn, but the damage from crows compelled the 
re-seeding of some of it. I have often wondered if 
those pests have any other mission in life besides 
pulling up young corn. Waters made some scare- 
crows that were very effective. He sewed un- 
bleached muslin together like a bag, leaving both 
ends open ; into each end he fixed a barrel hoop mak- 
ing a cylindrical arrangement five feet in length. 

152 



THAT FARM 

Through the centre he passed a bamboo fishing 
pole about twelve feet long, to the end of which he 
tied the top barrel hoop. When those devices 
were stuck up in the field, they swayed gently from 
side to side, and it seemed to puzzle the crows, for 
they would not venture near them. 

During the early spring months I had noticed 
that my wife spent a great deal of time sewing. 
It surprised me, too, for she had made wonderful 
plans during the winter for her garden — plans. In 
fact, that seemed to threaten some of my farming 
territory. There was a fountain to be installed, 
which was the most important and earliest of all 
the improvements, walkways were to be changed^ 
and my impression was that a sort of general trans- 
formation was to take place, but her Interest and 
energy seemed to centre in her work basket, and 
the faithful Italian worked on alone save for an 
occasional visit from the guiding mind. Time and 
experience have taught me that curiosity is a wo- 
man's right and a man's curse, so the industrious 
needle worked on from day to day, and dainty 
ribboned mysteries were finished and carefully laid 
by without even an Inquisitive look to disturb their 
creator. I had entertained a pardonable suspicion 
for some time, however, because I had missed Nellie 
from her regular duties, and one evening, after a 
rather crowded day about the house, James Dolan 

153 



THAT FARM 

informed me, through a lOO per cent, grin, that 
'* It's a boy." 

But pride, even that parental pride that seems 
justified in the advent of a son and heir, sometimes 
goes before trouble. Hardly was the young Dolan 
two days old when word came to me over the 
'phone that my "milk driver had been pinched for 
mussing up a man in Main Street." I went into 
the village and found James still sizzling with re- 
sentment. One of our competitors, whose busi- 
ness, unfortunately, had suffered because of Dolan's 
energy and our better milk, had attempted to kick 
a crate of our bottles and our driver off the side- 
walk into the street. He succeeded in so far as 
the bottles were concerned, but had been unable 
to fulfil that part of the contract involving Mr. 
Dolan. The average Irishman objects to being 
kicked under any circumstances, but when he has 
a two days' old boy baby at home he is particularly 
sensitive to Insult. The Court ordered our compet- 
itor to pay for the bottles he had broken, and told 
James to make a better job (which would have 
been impossible) of the next man who attempted 
to injure him or his property. 

The dairy business had grown to be quite an 
industry with us. By persistent canvassing and 
constant advertising (even in the shape of "muss- 
ing men up") our daily sales had increased to 350 

154 



THAT FARM 

quarts. I made a number of additions and changes 
in the dairy to meet the needs of the increased 
business. An 8-horsepower boiler was installed 
to supply power for a turbine bottle washer, and 
steam for a sterilizer. I put in a bottle-filling 
machine that held eighty quarts of milk and filled, 
automatically, six bottles at a time. The milk 
was poured directly into the machine from the pails 
through wire gauze and muslin strainers; the 
bottled milk was put at once into iced water. I 
did not use an aerator because I do not think there 
is any particular benefit to be derived from it. 

I bought ten additional cows that year at differ- 
ent times. One of the best I got from a man who 
lived about four miles out east of the village. I 
will never forget that farmer and his farm. It 
was the most perfect example of mismanagement 
that I have ever seen. The man sent his son, a 
travesty on American youth, to bring the cow up 
for our inspection. After a long while the boy 
appeared, some distance away, slowly driving the 
animal. The father watched him for a few min- 
utes and then called out: "Hurry up there, Her- 
bert, you're too slow to stop quick." The cow 
was a pretty grade Guernsey, about to have her 
third calf; I bought her at his price, $60. The 
man, I noticed, was "dressed up" and about to 
drive away when we got there. When the cow 

15s 



THAT FARM 

deal was closed he informed us that he had been 
summoned to do jury duty, but he would be right 
back, he told us, *' because they didn't want no 
Intelligent men on the jury." We heard afterward 
that they kept him two weeks. 

In previous years we had pastured our cattle, 
but that spring we began soiling them. We started 
with rye in the latter part of April and continued 
It up to June, when we commenced feeding fodder 
corn. The results obtained from soiling as com- 
pared with pasturing left no doubt in my mind of 
the superiority of the former method of feeding. 
It enables a man to keep the close watch over the 
appetites of his cattle that they must receive in 
order to get the best results. We have found that 
by tickling their palates they show their apprecia- 
tion in the milk pail. Salt is given to them once a 
day, fresh water Is always available, and they are 
turned out for exercise morning and evening. Our 
dairy Is not "model" In the sense of elaborate and 
expensive equipment, nor do we consider our prac- 
tices Insusceptible of Improvement, but our veter- 
inarian's bill, which for the past two years has 
amounted to ^90 ($80 of which was for four tuber- 
culin tests of the herd), speaks for the healthfulness 
of our dairy, and the daily milk records tell the 
story of our herd's productiveness. 

In taking stock of my experiences at that time 

156 



THAT FARM 

I felt satisfied that the theories I had brought with 
me from the city were sound enough — my mis- 
takes had been made in the methods I adopted of 
putting them into practice. My belief, at the be- 
ginning, was that milk could be produced at a 
profit. Sold In a quart bottle, at retail, it could; 
sold in a battered forty-quart can, at wholesale, it 
could not. Originally I was under the impression 
that a farm could be successfully run by mall 
through the medium of an overseer; that theory 
was not entirely wrong. A floor-walker can con- 
duct a hosiery or a millinery department very suc- 
cessfully — but the boss must be in the building. 
My ideas regarding the use of raw chemicals for 
fertilizing had proven correct enough, but I learned 
that In order to make them practical I had first to 
till the soil and improve its condition. And so 
with the other branches of the business. We were 
not working along perfect lines, but the profit and 
loss account showed that we were at least following 
a practical course. 

One afternoon in the latter part of June we were 
getting the mowing-machines in readiness for hay- 
ing when an old man came into the shop. His 
wagon had "run dry" and he wanted to "borrow" 
some axle grease. He was a stranger whom I had 
never seen before. 

"Gettin' ready to mow, are you.'"* he asked, 

157 



THAT FARM 

when he returned the wagon-jack and tub of 
grease. 

*'Yes," I said, "we always like to take advan- 
tage of the clear weather that comes at this time 
and get through with the job." 

"Well," he remarked, "you needn't crowd your- 
self none this year, for we're goin' to have a spell 
of clear weather, unless I'm wrong." And he 
shuffled out into the road where his weary team 
was enjoying the rest the "hot box" had afforded 

them. 

How often during the scorching weeks that fol- 
lowed did I think of that grizzled old wayfarer and 
his sinister prophecy. What weird intuitive powers 
some old countrymen seem to have! 



158 



CHAPTER XV 

IN WHICH WE BECOME ACQUAINTED WITH THE 

farmer's BANE SUMMER DROUGHT AND 

JUNIOR BECOMES A MEMBER OF THE FIRM 

THERE is one human failing that we never 
seem to overcome — "counting our chick- 
ens before they are hatched/' A great 
many people will not admit this failing, if it may be 
called such, but there never was an undertaking 
since the world began that was not conceived 
in a firm belief that the coveted end would be 
attained. And, after all, is it not just as well that 
it should be so? If we believed that all our plans 
were going to prove failures instead of successes, 
how few we would make and how little we would 
progress. 

We had only sixty acres to mow that season — 
it was all clover; our old meadows had been plowed 
the previous autumn. The fields we seeded with 
rye and timothy held a splendid stand of young 
grass that gave great promise for the following 
year. We were nearly three weeks cutting our 



THAT FARM 

clover; It is not an easy crop to handle when It Is 
heavy, as ours was. When the weather was clear 
we turned the hay over in the afternoon of the day 
it was cut, then got it into the mow the following 
forenoon. There is a tremendous loss in clover 
when it is cured too dry, while, on the other hand, 
if it is not sufficiently cured it will mold Into worth- 
lessness In the mow; you cannot take liberties with 
it as you can with timothy. 

It had been splendid haying weather, but we 
needed a little rain. Farmers do not object to 
getting In their hay between showers, because it is 
done at a time of the year when the other crops 
need moisture. Our oats and rye were harvested 
through a continued clear spell, then we began to 
look for a welcome " thunder head." 

We little realized what was In store for us. Day 
by day we watched the sun sink from a cloudless 
sky into a west that looked like a sea of burning oil. 
I have often wondered if the author of "golden 
sunset" would have felt the same inspiration in 
August If he had had a hundred acres of standing 
corn that needed moisture. Six weeks passed 
without a drop of rain, six weeks of a hot, dry wind 
that blighted everything. Pastures were burned 
to a crisp, and most of the springs and brooks went 
dry. The cattle, even housed as they were, 
with the barn windows shaded and screened 

1 60 



THAT FARM 

against the torturing green flies, looked weary and 
tired. The chickens, with their mouths open and 
their wings held away from their bodies, seemed 
to have had the energy scorched out of them. 

There is something treacherous about drought; 
we expect devastation to come with the tornado, 
and destruction with the lightning, but it is hard 
to associate sunshine with ruin. If you have 
never been a farmer you cannot appreciate the true 
meaning of drought because you only feel its effects 
indirectly; you feel it in your bills for necessaries 
long after it has done its deadly work. With the 
farmer it is different because it strikes directly at 
his source of income, just as fire or failure overtake 
the business man in the city — with this difference, 
however, that the farmer is not indemnified by in- 
surance, nor is he able, except in irrigated districts, 
to avoid or cope with the disaster. He may have 
his efforts wasted and his capital wiped out in one 
season of dryness, while he is a helpless witness to 
the destruction. 

In drawing a picture of farming it would be un- 
fair to omit this disagreeable feature of it. The 
city-weary man who in his heart knows the advan- 
tages and opportunities of the life beyond his oflfice 
walls may, perhaps, have fashioned in his dreams 
only the kindness of God descending upon the field 
worker; he may have him tilling a magic earth 

i6i 



THAT FARM 

that pours forth its bounty unstinted, or reveling 
in an easy happiness that is proof against the sting 
of hurt. But he must not lose sight of the practi- 
cal side, or, better, the hazardous side. It exists in 
agriculture to a lesser degree than in any other oc- 
cupation, but it is there, nevertheless. The most 
elaborate flights of the dreamer's fertile imagina- 
tion cannot lead him beyond the charms that are 
here in the beautiful hill country, but the romance 
of it all comes up hard every now and then against 
little real things like drought and hog cholera. 

Weber's garden, into which he had put his best 
eflforts, seemed to be the burial place of all his 
hopes. It would not have been appraised a total 
loss, however, for he and his wife and their assist- 
ant had been industrious with watering pots, but 
Weber was to enjoy no bumper crop of garden 
truck, and that weighed heavily on him. 

The early spring had given the corn a good 
start, and the strong, deep, green-colored plants 
had stood the heat for a month, but then the 
drought began to get its deadly work In on them. 
Corn makes most during the latter part of July and 
August, and it must not be set back then. During 
the day the leaves curled up to protect themselves 
against the merciless sun, and in the evening they 
would spread out again to beg a little moisture 
from the night. We cultivated — cultivated until 

162 



THAT FARM 

the machines raised clouds of dust like mule teams 
on the Mojave Desert. Every few days Waters 
and I went out to examine the crop. It was the 
seventh dusty week of the drought. 

"Is It ever going to rain.?" I asked him one 
day. 

"It always has," he said, "and if it doesn't wait 
too long we'll save some of this corn; it isn't ruined 
yet by a long shot." 

We had walked down to the southern end of the 
farm and were resting in the shade at the edge of a 
corn field. 

"There Is one thing that surprises me," I said, 
"and that is how we have escaped a recurrence of 
cholera among the hogs during this long dry spell." 

"It is a wonder," he answered, "but do " 

There was a long rumbling in the west, and a 
cool breeze began rustling the corn. 

"There comes your rain," Waters said. 

We looked out beyond the trees where we were 
sitting, and, sure enough, the black clouds were 
piling over one another as though they were in a 
hurry to get somewhere. We sat enjoying the 
breeze for a few minutes and then started back to 
the house. But the rain was faster than we were, 
and before we had gone two hundred yards it 
came pouring down and drenched us to the skin. 
As we turned through the gateway Waters said: 

163 



THAT FARM 

"Something told me to carry an umbrella this 
afternoon." 

The rain fell steadily through the night, and in 
the bright sunshine next morning the drought 
seemed washed out of everything but the brown 
fields and memory. The colts scampered about 
in the pasture, the cattle enjoyed their exercise on 
the cool, wet ground, and the hens resumed their 
cackling. In the evening Junior and I went with 
the setters for a walk. We drifted down to the hog 
lot where the shotes were busy rooting in the damp 
ground. Junior's mind seemed always to guide his 
feet and his tongue in the direction of animals — he 
was a stockman at heart. He appreciated the 
importance of hay and grain, but to him they were 
like fuel that creates power for an engine. 

"I've got a scheme," he said, as he drew a small 
booklet out of his pocket. "Here's a pamphlet on 
'anti-hog-cholera serum.' As I understand it they 
have found a means of preventing the spread of 
that disease in a herd. The experiments with it 
have been very successful. On the strength of it 
I think we can afford to go in for more hogs." 

"How many had you thought of raising?" I 
asked. 

"About five hundred or one thousand," he said; 
"those forty acres of woodland will make a splen- 
did run for them." 

164 



THAT FARM 

Five hundred or a thousand! My second son 
was no "piker" at any rate. 

"Down here at Bellville," he continued, "there 
are two big ice cream factories that ship to three 
cities. I've been in to see them a couple of times 
and they will take all the cream we can ship them 
at thirty-five cents a quart. Now, my idea is to 
put in a turbine separator, buy milk from the 
neighboring farmers, separate it, ship the cream 
to Bellville, and use the separated milk for the hogs. 
A forty-quart can of milk will cost $i.6o, and from 
it we will get four and one half quarts of cream 
which, at thirty-five cents a quart, will give us 
$1.57. The remaining thirty-five and one half 
quarts of milk will cost us three cents. That's 
pretty cheap hog feed, don't you think. f*" 

It was, indeed, a good scheme. The anti-hog- 
cholera serum would have been sufficient justifica- 
tion to me to go extensively into hogs, and with the 
prospect of feed at that price there should be some 
money in pork. It was an industry of itself well 
worth any man's undivided attention. But what 
I liked most about it was that Junior had worked 
the thing out himself. It showed that his atten- 
tion was not wholly taken up with the clean-limbed 
thoroughbred that he rode so well, nor with the 
two setters that lived in his shadow, nor even with 
a curly-haired companion whom I had noticed on 

i6s 



THAT FARM 

several occasions tucked in most comfortably be- 
side him when he drove. That curly-haired girl, 
by the way, was becoming more and more appar- 
ent about the farm. 

My second son was given to riding alone much 
less than formerly, and a silver cup, that stuck out 
like a sore thumb in the living-room, bore some in- 
scription about "mixed doubles" at the near by 
Country Club. However, that is not an agricultural 
matter; it is simply a condition that sometimes 
manifests itself in a young man, like chilblains 
or chin whiskers. It may cause a temporary 
diversion of the mind from the more important 
matters of business, but the distraction is seldom, 
if ever, chronic. 

The neighborhood sages predicted a cold winter 
after the drought; further than that they had 
"never seen it fail," they could offer no intelligent 
reason for the prophecy. I had learned, however, 
to respect the words of those old men, especially 
in regard to the weather, so we commenced a little 
earlier than usual to prepare for winter. The corn 
had recovered somewhat during late August and 
early September, but the ears were small and not 
well filled out; there was little more to be expected 
from it that season, so we commenced harvesting 
about the middle of September. We hauled more 
muck out of the ravine that autumn and scattered 

i66 



THAT FARM 

it over the fields; I put on about twenty bushels of 
lime to the acre with it. I don't believe there was 
any particular fertility value to that muck, but it 
did improve the physical character of the soil, and 
that was what I was after. Our fall plowing car- 
ried us well up to the cold weather. 

Stock feed was high that fall because the drought 
had extended over the grain producing sections of 
the whole country — in fact, it had started earlier 
in many localities than it had with us. I sold all 
my hay by December ist. 

Clover was in demand among the cattlemen, for 
the short corn crop had reduced their supply of 
ensilage, and few of them had sufHcient fodder for 
their stock. What corn and oats we had to sell 
were ground and mixed, and we got ^30 a ton for it. 
Some rye was kept to be fed to the hogs, but the 
bulk of the crop was sold at $i,io a bushel. 

The greatest drawback to stock raising here in 
the east is the high cost of feed. It is more profit- 
able for the farmer, as a general thing, to sell his 
hay and grain than to feed it, for the simple reason 
that he does not use the proper amount of judg- 
ment in the character of live stock that he keeps. 
There was a time when numerous factory by-prod- 
ucts could be had, almost for their removal, that 
made excellent feed for cattle and hogs, but the 
inventive American mind has devised means of 

167 



THAT FARM 

utilizing for commercial use or human consump- 
tion what was formerly waste matter. Separated 
milk at any such cost as "Junior" spoke of, coup- 
led with a protective remedy against cholera, 
made hog raising a most attractive proposition, 
and I began to look once more upon the industry 
as I had done before my experience with disease 
two years before. 

If cholera can be kept away from the hog, or the 
hog kept away from cholera, he is a profitable farm 
product when raised under the proper conditions. 
If kept confined in close quarters and fed from day 
to day he will prove rather expensive in the end; 
but where he is turned out on a range and supplied 
with green food, and a mixture corresponding in 
price and nutritive value to broken crackers and 
separated milk that we feed, he will rapidly grow 
into profit. 

When I had cholera among my hogs, and for 
some time after, I looked around to see if there was 
any way by which I could guard against a recur- 
rence of the disease. I found nothing of any value, 
but during my investigation I was interested in the 
theories some farmers held about hog raising. 
There was a great diversity of opinion among them 
in regard to breeding, feeding, and treatment of 
cholera, but in the great majority of cases I noticed 
that particular effort was made to avoid spending 

l68 



THAT FARM 

any care on the hog. One man proudly boasted 
of the fact that he had never had a sick hog on his 
place and it was all due, he asserted, to the manner 
in which he raised his animals. If I had been a 
microbe I would have journeyed round the world 
to get to that farmer's pig pen; it beggars de- 
scription. One must have seen it to appreciate its 
true condition. But for a small platform of logs 
along one side, the pens were a slimy mass of filth, 
with old boxes, broken jugs, and various other 
trash scattered about; in one pen the front truck 
of a wagon was partly submerged in the ooze, and 
while by no means ornamental it was an ideal back 
scratcher for the animals. Ears of corn thrown 
into the enclosure disappeared in the mire, but the 
hogs apparently found them for they were as fat 
and healthy as any I ever saw. Another farmer 
whose ideas and equipment were just the other 
extreme informed me that he counted on cholera 
attacking his hogs every five or six years. I had 
no idea of adopting the methods of the ** successful " 
hog raiser that I had visited, so I looked upon the 
industry as extremely precarious until I read the 
pamphlet "Junior" gave me and investigated the 
remedy described in it. 

From October 15th to November 15th we en- 
joyed a new feature of farm life — it was the open 
season on quail. Such other pleasures as the farm 

169 



THAT FARM 

afforded us any other countryman could have had 
if he would, but it was not given to every man to 
walk a hundred yards from his front door and have 
his dogs come to a point on a covey of quail, nor 
to find nine coveys on his farm without crossing 
on to a neighbor's land. Junior had made a good 
brace of dogs out of the two pups; they pointed and 
backed very well, seldom letting their enthusiasm 
get the better of them. My friend came up from 
the city with the sire and dam of the pups, and the 
four dogs worked beautifully together. Puppies do 
much better in the field when they have old dogs 
to steady them. 

We had a week of splendid shooting. Junior 
used a 20-gauge gun, but we stuck to the 12. 
Somehow we older men don't take kindly to these 
small-bore guns of to-day — lack of confidence in 
ourselves, no doubt. Later in the season we had 
some good partridge shooting up in the hills. 

The local weather prophets must have been in- 
spired, for winter came in with a vengeance. A 
heavy snow fell just after Thanksgiving, and the 
cold weather continued almost unbroken until late 
in January. We had our ice-houses filled by 
Christmas. 

Before a comfortable log fire in the living-room 
I closed the farm books for the year; a transcript 
of the accounts follows : 

170 



THAT FARM 

RECEIPTS 

3,150 bu. rye at ^i. 10 per bu $ 3,465.00 

95 tons ground oats and cob meal at $30 per ton 2,850.00 

85 tons clover hay at $27.50 per ton .... 2,337.00 

65 dressed hogs, 7,856 lbs. at lo^ cents per lb. . 805.24 

65 plucks at 45 cents each 29.25 

2,950 doz. eggs at 25 cents per doz 737 -50 

650 dressed chickens at 55 cents each .... 357 -50 

225 Leghorn pullets at 75 cents each .... 168.75 

Garden truck 228.50 

Reaping 125 acres oats at $2 per acre .... 250.00 

65 tons baled rye straw at $17 per ton .... 1,105.00 

1,575 lbs. dressed meat at 15 cents per lb. . . 236.25 

109,643 quarts milk at 8 cents per quart . . . 8,771 .44 

Total $21,341.93 



EXPENDITURES 

Wages: 

4 Russians at $25 per month each .... $ 1,200.00 

I gardener at $20 per month 240.00 

Frank Waters at $50 per month 600.00 

James Dolan at $30 per month 360.00 

Chas. Weber and wife at $40 per month . . 480.00 

Keep of 6 men at $12 per month, each .... 864.00 

Fertilizer 928.00 

10 cows at $72 each (average) 720.00 

2 Berkshire boars at $40 each 80.00 

Husking corn 396.25 

Butchering 65 hogs at 50 cents each .... 32.50 

7 tons hog feed at $13.50 per ton 94- SO 

I market wagon 115.00 

171 



THAT FARM 

I boiler, 8 horsepower $ 175.00 

I bottle filler 50.00 

I bottle washer 30.00 

Installing boiler and washer 25.00 

Dairy incidentals 78.50 

Taxes 250.00 

Insurance 325.00 

Incidentals 128.25 

James Dolan's commission, 5 per cent. . . . 438.57 

Chas. Weber's commission, 5 per cent. . . . 74-6l 
Depreciation 10 per cent, on $11,316.50 stock 

and equipment 1,131.65 

Interest 5 per cent, on investment of $28,250 . . 1,412.50 

Frank Waters's commission, 5 per cent. . . . 575.24 

Total $10,412.32 

It had not been a year of particular abundance, 
but there was no grumbling; even Weber seemed 
to have forgiven Providence for burning up his 
garden. His interest check was materially re- 
duced because of the drought, but he did not com- 
plain. He came from a race of people who are not 
given to capitalizing misfortune. 

My son's attitude, at that time, toward the farm 
left no doubt in my mind that he liked the life and 
appreciated its possibilities as a business. He was 
no longer a boy, and he was entitled to a definite 
understanding regarding his position on the farm. 
He had never alluded to the subject, and I had 
deferred any reference to it until such time as I 

172 



THAT FARM 

thought it could be made without its having the 
tendency to influence him. We had been going 
over the books together one evening, discussing 
the past year's work and making plans for the fu- 
ture. When we finished I said to him: 

*'Junior, I have given you boys all the latitude 
you could expect in the selection of the ways you 
wish to follow through life. Your brothers have 
already chosen, and I have commended them be- 
cause their choices admit of no criticism. My 
wish and advice have always been that you be 
the architects of your own futures, so long as you 
worked upon wholesome plans, for you must abide 
in them. I had not the freedom of choice in the 
selection of a business or profession that you have 
had; I was led by necessity over a good part of the 
world, and through various occupations, before 
circumstances finally enabled me to enter the field 
where I could succeed. You have been here for 
more than a year now, and you have seen the four 
corners of farming. You have seen the well-laid 
plans of spring curl out of shape in a seven weeks' 
drought, you know the destruction which disease 
has wrought among the stock, and you know that 
the dollar must be earned in agriculture just as in 
any other legitimate occupation. On the other 
hand, you know what it is to have the sun shine on 
you, and to enjoy the freedom and independence 

173 



THAT FARM 

that are peculiar to the life of a farmer. From 
your attitude I believe you are contented in, what 
I consider, the prettiest profession in the world, a 
profession that holds opportunity and happiness. 
So, on January ist, I am going to make you an 
equal partner in this business and we will try our 
luck together under the firm name of Harrison 
Whittingham & Son." 



174 



CHAPTER XVI 

IN WHICH I BECOME INTERESTED IN TURKEYS, 
AND THE HOG BUSINESS, UNDER JUNIOr's 
GUIDANCE, BEGINS TO PAY 

OUR Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys 
were always bought from one of the mar- 
ketmen in the village. They were excep- 
tionally nice birds, and when I got the last one 
(eighteen pounds at thirty-five cents), I inquired 
about them. The butcher told me that for years 
he had been getting the birds from an old fellow 
named Gaines, who made his living raising them on 
a little farm about seven miles north of the town 
up in the hills. 

I had always wanted to raise some turkeys, but 
there were very few in our immediate neighborhood 
and it was difficult to get eggs, so I had put it off 
from time to time. One spring day, however, we 
drove up to see Mr. Gaines. His little farm was 
different from any I had ever seen before, except, 
perhaps, one that I ran across years ago, on a hunt- 
ing trip, sixty miles from a railroad in the heart of 
the Ozark Mountains. 

175 



THAT FARM 

There were turkeys out in that country, too, and 
plenty of them, but they were wild and it was in 
quest of them that I came upon that mountain 
farm that I shall never forget. Sometimes at 
sundown I can see the little place just as I saw 
it that afternoon thirty-odd years ago, in the 
shadow of Philipp's Knob. Government bulle- 
tins, scientific farming, agricultural colleges — all 
were unknown to those people who lived appar- 
ently more by the grace of God than by their own 
handiwork. 

On a piece of cleared land that looked as though 
it might have been chiseled out of the dense woods 
there was some corn, about an acre of it, struggling 
among the surface stones; a cow, and a couple of 
pigs were about all else that I could see to furnish a 
living; but the man might have been a woodsman 
or an illicit distiller for all I knew because I did not 
bother him with what might prove to be imperti- 
nent questions about his private affairs. But per- 
haps that strange little rudely made place out in 
the wilderness has lasted in my memory because 
of a peculiar circumstance connected with my visit 
to it. The trip to Mr. Gaines's farm brought back 
to my mind every detail of it. 

We had travelled a long way from camp on our 
turkey hunt that day, and my companion and I 
concluded to try to put up for the night at the 

176 



THAT FARM 

farmhouse and return the following morning. 
They gave us supper — ham and eggs, soda bis- 
cuits, fried potatoes, and terrible coffee — but un- 
der no circumstances would they listen to our 
remaining over night; in fact, we had been put 
through a perfect "third degree" before we were 
given anything to eat. At the supper table with 
us, besides the farmer, his wife, and daughter, there 
were two men, one rather heavy set and black 
bearded, the other tall and thin, with a black 
moustache. The heavy-set man had nothing to 
say, but the other asked us about our hunting trip, 
our destination, etc. He had a kind face and a 
pleasant smile, and although both he and his 
companion differed somewhat from our host, we 
paid little attention to it. After supper, for which 
the farmer declined our proffered pay, we set out 
in the twilight for camp, where we arrived the next 
day after sleeping all night in the woods. More 
than twenty years after that night I was attending 
the races one afternoon out at the Fair Grounds in 
St. Louis. The track patrol had returned from an 
inspection of the course and in front of the judges 
stand I saw alight from the surrey the tall, pleasant 
man that had been at supper that night down in 
the Ozark Mountain farmhouse. He was gray 
and stooped somewhat, but I recognized him. I 
asked the gatekeeper what the man's name was 

177 



THAT FARM 

and he said: "That's Frank James, Jesse James's 
brother. He's track inspector here." 

Gaines's place, unlike the one in the West, was, 
not dilapidated; it was hand-hewn and weather- 
beaten, and seemed to have grown there like the 
trees and tangled underbrush that surrounded it. 
For seventy-six years the old man had lived there, 
and in all that time he had never been to the city 
— he had never seen a trolley car. Yet, from 
where I stood talking with him, one could in two 
hours have been in the main entrance of the Metro- 
politan Opera House. But he did have some nice 
turkeys. 

I do not recall ever having seen any great num- 
ber of the birds on any farm before. Where they 
are raised at all there is a small flock of a dozen or 
less wandering about, but no particular attention 
is paid to them. The few appear to be healthy 
enough, and it has always puzzled me why they are 
not raised more extensively; certainly the price of 
the birds in market would justify farmers in de- 
voting some attention to them. I have frequently 
heard it stated that climate has much to do with 
successful turkey raising. The Albemarle pippin 
does best at a certain limited altitude on the moun- 
tainside down in Virginia; above and below that 
belt an inferior grade of apple is raised. Perhaps 
altitude may have something to do with turkey 

178 



THAT FARM , 

raising. Aside from that, however, I had always 
been under the impression that they were difficult 
birds to raise, but Mr. Gaines's method was not 
very complicated. 

"A turkey," he told me, "will lay about twenty- 
one eggs before she goes to settin'. I take the eggs 
out of the nest as they're laid and keep 'em in the 
house, turnin' 'em over every day. I put from 
sixteen to twenty-one eggs under the old bird when 
she sets, and she'll generally hatch all but one or 
two of 'em. I feed the little fellers bread and milk 
and let 'em run with the mother. When it comes 
a rain I drive 'em up, but otherwise I just let 'em 
go wherever they've a mind to — it's their nature 
to roam. When they get to be six weeks old I put 
the old bird under a coop and begin feedin' the 
young ones oats or wheat. I have hatched 'em 
under common hens, but they don't seem to do' so 
well as when they're hatched under turkeys." 

" Is that all you do with them ? " I inquired. 

** All, except to sell 'em," he replied. 

That little old man's system of turkey raising 
may or may not be correct, but his flock of nearly 
a hundred healthy birds was a powerful argument 
in its favor. From him and two of his neighbors I 
got ICO eggs at eight cents apiece. We put them 
under Plymouth Rock hens and| hatched out 69; 
of that number we succeeded in raising 52. Nearly 

179 



, ,THAT FARM 

all those that were] lost died before they were six 
weeks old. We reserved all the hens for breeding 
purposes. Any barnyard fowl that will sell for 
^6.30 across a butcher's counter is worth particular 
attention on a farm. 

In doing our spring plowing that year I used 
gang plows in place of the single ones we had for- 
merly used. With the three that I put into the 
fields I accomplished twice the amount of work, 
with no additional labor; in other words, our plow- 
ing was done in about one half the time that had 
formerly been required. We followed practically 
the same plan of crop rotation as in other years; 
no doubt we will be able to improve upon it as we 
go along, but so far the system has proved very 
good. Where corn had been on 1 10 acres we sowed 
oats and clover, fertilizing with 50 pounds nitrate 
of soda and 100 pounds acid phosphate to the acre. 
In another field of 30 acres, where corn had been, 
we planted soy beans, using a mixture of 200 pounds 
acid phosphate and 100 pounds muriate of potash 
to the acre. Where oats had been we fertilized 
with 200 pounds dried blood, 250 pounds acid 
phosphate, and 100 pounds muriate potash, for the 
corn that followed. The 50-acre clover field, that 
had been turned under in the fall, was also planted 
in corn. We had 10 acres in buckwheat, 12 in 
wheat, and 9 in potatoes. The new timothy mead- 

180 



THAT FARM 

ows were helped with a mixture of lOO pounds 
nitrate soda, lOO pounds acid phosphate, and 50 
pounds muriate of potash to the acre. 

In March we Installed a steam-driven tubular 
cream separator In a small building, erected for 
the purpose, close to the boiler room. The ma- 
chine had a capacity of 1,000 pounds per hour, and 
cost ^182.50 set up for use. Contracts were made 
with some of the nearby farmers for the delivery 
of milk, beginning May ist, when the new crop of 
pigs would require feeding. In the fall we had 
reserved 40 young sows for breeding; they and the 
other brood sows farrowed 410 pigs during Febru- 
ary and March. The young stock was kept In the 
pens for two months, then turned out Into the 
woodland, which was tightly fenced. 

From the start Junior watched over every detail 
of the new hog Industry. He had conceived the 
idea, and If It proved a failure he apparently did 
not Intend that It should result from mismanage- 
ment. On paper It worked out most attractively, 
but, of course, like everything of that kind, there 
are always Innumerable unforeseen circumstances 
that may arise to alter the original calculations. 
The separated milk enabled us to solve to a great 
extent the problem of feed, and for protection 
against disease we depended upon the yet untried 
serum. He superintended the separating of the 

181 



THAT FARM 

milk, the shipping of the cream, and the feeding 
and care of the animals. It was a great sight to 
see those pigs eat. Have you ever seen 410 pigs 
at meal time.^ It's very much like a bargain day 
rush at a hosiery counter. I could not help, at 
times, from picturing cholera parading among that 
bunch of hogs, for the new serum treatment could 
not blot out the memory of my past experience. 
But Junior's enthusiasm more than supplied any 
that might have been lacking in me. "I wish we 
had a thousand," he said one day, "it's easier than 
clipping coupons!" What a pity it is that the 
ardent zeal of youth contracts with expanding 
years. 

Napoleon once said that boys make the best 
soldiers, and I believe they will make the best 
farmers when they are brought into an apprecia- 
tion of the opportunities in the country. When 
the schooled mind of the country boy sets to work 
to develop agriculture along scientific business lines, 
the farmer will become the power in this country's 
affairs that his occupation entitles him to be. He 
is a worker and a producer, and he should have a 
powerful influence in directing the nation that he 
clothes and feeds. But he will not enjoy that 
privilege until he climbs up to the top rail of the 
barnyard fence and looks about for the way to im-. 
prove his present condition. It is not hard to see. 

182 



CHAPTER XVII 

IN WHICH THE VEGETABLE GARDEN AND 
DAIRY MAKE PROGRESS 

OUR dairy business had grown until we were 
compelled to make two trips daily to sup- 
ply our patrons; the wagon went into the 
village at six in the morning, and again at three in 
the afternoon. To have gotten another wagon 
would have meant an additional driver and another 
team of horses, so I bought, instead, a light auto- 
mobile. All things considered, it was cheaper 
than the wagons and horses, and it enabled us to 
deliver all our milk speedily in the morning. The 
early morning is the time to sell milk at retail — 
not the afternoon. 

I have noticed that the most particular man in 
the world about his food is the American workman. 
His wife is a good plain cook, as a rule, but she 
knows none of the culinary tricks by which inferior 
food can be made palatable, so she gets good, 
wholesome things for her table — fresh vegetables, 
tender meats, etc. Gradually our milk worked 

183 



THAT FARM 

its way into the clean little homes of the workers. 
The extra penny that it cost kept some of the 
housewives from buying it at first, but after they 
tried it they counted the additional penny a day a 
good investment. 

John Conway was the hotel keeper in the village. 
He was more popular than any two other men in 
town. John's baby had been sick for some time, 
and the local talent had not been able to locate the 
trouble. Country doctors don't, as a rule, win 
many Nobel prizes, but probably it is because they 
have so little practice. Anyhow, John sent into 
the city for a specialist, who came up the following 
day with a trained nurse. Then Conway stopped 
James Dolan in front of the hotel. 

"Jim," he said, **this new doctor says my kid 
has got to have rich, pure milk every day from the 
same cow; can you bring it to me in a bottle every 
morning?" 

"Sure, I can. We've got cows out there that 
give milk that'd put fat on a rainbow's shadow, 
and I'll have one milked special for you every day." 

In a month Conway's baby had gained five 
pounds, and James Dolan was quick to turn the 
fact to commercial use. We had the baby's pic- 
ture published in the village paper with a full 
account of the sickness and salvation. That an- 
cient method of advertising is not used much now- 

184 



THAT FARM 

adays, because the fakirs have worked galled spots 
on it and it won't go. The woman in Milwaukee, 
for example, no longer wastes her money on the 
** wonderful infant food" that is advertised under 
a picture of some fat Cincinnati baby, and the 
thin-haired Omaha debutante is no longer caught 
by the Chicago "dandruff cure" man who baits 
his hook with the picture of a flowing haired girl 
from Wabash Avenue. But in our little commu- 
nity, where a living verification of the story was 
wheeled up and down Main Street in a baby-buggy, 
the hackneyed *^ad." worked wonders. There 
were many other mothers in the village, generously 
endowed with offspring, and it was not long before 
the automobile delivery wagon stopped at most of 
their doors. 

When we discontinued the milk wagon, the horses 
were turned over to Weber for use on his vege- 
table wagon. That wagon was painted lemon 
yellow with black striping, as all our farm wagons 
were, and had a white canvas top with slightly pro- 
jecting covers like awnings on each side. The bed 
extended out over the wheels about six inches, and 
when it was loaded for market with vegetables 
carefully banked on both sides it made quite a nice 
appearance. I know the little care spent upon 
equipment was a good investment because it helped 
to make sales. 

i8s 



THAT FARM 

Weber commenced making trips to the village 
in April, selling asparagus and eggs; in the early 
part of the season he got forty cents a bunch for 
asparagus. He raised some twenty-odd varieties 
of vegetables, and most of them were readily sold 
to the townspeople. 

The vegetable garden was a picture. There were 
no graveled walkways bordered with flowers, no 
fountains, no rustic benches — just vegetables. 
It is hard to add to the beauty of a well-kept mar- 
ket garden. Weber had a very good knowledge of 
gardening, and he was ambitious to improve it. 
He did not stick stubbornly to ancient ideas; he 
believed that modern garden practices were better 
than old methods, just as he believed that the auto- 
mobile (although he had never ridden in one) was 
an improvement upon the two-wheeled cart that 
his ancestors used in the suburbs of Hamburg. 

He read market garden literature whenever he 
could find time, and looked carefully over all the 
seed and implement catalogues. He had a weak- 
ness for trying new seeds, and every season found 
him doing a certain amount of experimental work. 
When anything proved particularly good he always 
reserved some of the seed for the following year. 

But the vegetable garden did not escape criti- 
cism. Like the rest of the farm it suffered by 
comparison with the ideals of Mr. George Gunn, 

i86 



THAT FARM 

who never let slip an opportunity to find fault 
with our farming. He was the R. F. D. man. 
For six days In the week Mr. Gunn delivered mail 
for the Government, and on the seventh he preached 
what was alleged to be the word of God in a little 
country meeting house. Temperamentally he was 
hardly a man one would look to for spiritual 
inspiration, and physically. he was by no means 
prepossessing; his face was abundantly covered 
with a beard that resembled the end view of a 
painter's faded duster. Our plowing, our planting, 
our harvesting, all seemed to fall below the stand- 
ards of Mr. Gunn, and one day in the fall, our 
hunting brought forth an account of his exploits 
with jaguars in South America, that delayed the 
next farmer's mail nearly half an hour. 

Junior always resented that reflection upon our 
work in the hunting field. However, one spring 
day when the agent of the Postal Department 
opened our mail box, a very active, but little do- 
mesticated, country cat suddenly came out from 
inside. The alarm of the South American jaguar 
hunter was Imparted to his faithful old mare Sallie, 
and she carried him and his cart rather hurriedly 
down the road for a quarter of a mile. Old Sallie, 
fortunately, was '' touched In the wind" and that 
was as far as she could go on high gear. 

Then followed a breach of friendship between 

187 



THAT FARM 

Mr. Gunn and our farm — a blissful period during 
which we got out mail ungarnished with captious 
conversation. But the fates were against us, for 
about two weeks later, old Sallie, out of pure mean^ 
ness, laid down in the shafts at our front gate. 
All manner of persuasion, all styles of kicking, and 
all brands of profanity failed to stir the old bay 
mare, and finally Waters went to the rescue. 

"What's the matter," he asked, "has she got 
colic?" 

"Colic, hell!" old Gunn snapped out: "it's just 
the devil in her. She's done this on me several 
times lately." 

"Just wait a moment," said Waters, and he 
went back to the house. He returned with a small 
bottle of water which he poured into Sallie's ear — 
she was on her feet in an instant. 

"I'm going to carry a bottle of water in my mail 
bag from now on," Mr. Gunn said, as he drove 
away, smiling gratefully through his bristly beard. 

There was one thing I had wanted to do for a 
long time, that was to put up a silo. I thought of 
doing it ourselves during some dull period, but dull 
periods were becoming more and more infrequent 
as the development of the farm progressed, so I 
gave the contract to a builder In the village who had 
done a great deal of that kind of work for dairymen 
in the vicinity. At the end of the cattle barn he 

i88 



THAT FARM 

built a silo 32 feet high and 21 feet in diameter, 
which was big enough, I figured, for all of our re- 
quirements. I had been told that the feeding of 
ensilage to dairy cattle had a tendency to affect 
their milk injuriously, but my experience has been 
that it increases the quantity, and, although I 
have made no actual tests, I am satisfied that it 
also improves the quality. We not only feed it to 
our cattle, but to our horses as well; it keeps them 
in splendid condition through the winter. Of 
course, it is fed more sparingly to the horses than 
to the cattle, and in addition the usual grain ration 
is given them. 

Perhaps a little bookkeeping on that subject 
may not be out of place here. The contractor's 
charge for putting up that silo, including every- 
thing, was ^515, the cost of filling it was ^170, a 
total of $685. Interest on that investment, at 6 
per cent., amounted to ^41.10 a year. The in- 
creased production of milk which resulted from 
feeding ensilage paid that interest in less than one 
week. 

After the carpenters had finished the silo. Junior 
gave them a few days' work building a kennel. It 
was only a small building 16 feet long and 10 feet 
wide, divided Into two compartments, with wired 
runways from each. The building has been en- 
larged since then. The exchange of two puppies 

189 



THAT FARM 

for some shooting was the beginning of a friendship 
between Junior and my city friend that grew into 
a partnership in the breeding of Irish setters. The 
paint was hardly dry on the new kennel before an 
imported bitch arrived, in whelp to the best dog 
in this country. She whelped seven beautiful pups. 
That was the beginning of a kennel that now has 
five brood bitches and two stud dogs — one a 
"champion." 

The village house painter was a great hunter 
and he wanted one of the setter puppies very much, 
but ^50, the price at which they were sold, was too 
much for him, sportsman though he was. One 
day Junior told him to come up and get a pup and 
instead of paying cash for it he could do a little 
** touching up" that Mrs. Whittingham wanted 
done about the house. The painter was very 
much pleased with the proposition and sent a man 
up to do whatever was required. 

The man spent a good many days *^ touching 
up," and the village painter afterward said It was 
the worst bargain he had ever made, because Mrs. 
Whittingham had made his man paint nearly the 
entire inside of her house for that pup. 

There Is a sympathetic tie among men who hunt. 
Regardless of their years, they meet on the same 
plane and pack their guns and follow the dogs in a 
brotherhood of contentment. My city friend be- 

190 ' 



THAT FARM 

came a frequent visitor to the farm. He was an 
engineer by profession — due, I think, to the fact 
that his father had been one before him and the 
parental influence had shaped the son into the 
mantle of his father. He filled it very gracefully, 
however, for my friend ranks among our best en- 
gineers to-day. But instinctively he was a farmer, 
and he came to be a frequent visitor with us, not 
alone during the hunting season, but at all times 
of the year. In the spring he would come to watch 
the plowing, and haying time would often lure him 
into the meadows where he would pitch hay for the 
exercise of it. During the fall — pay day season 
on the farm — he was most interested, for it was 
then that he saw the business side of it. He would 
stand beside the threshing-machine fascinated 
while the stream of grain came out and bag after 
bag was carted away to the granary. At hog- 
killing time he would look over the rows of clean 
dressed pork ready for market and figure out the 
income from them. Then he would run his hand 
through his hair, shake his head, and say he was 
going to get a place and start farming; but the 
following Monday morning would find him going 
back to the city to study over the tensile strength 
of bridge cables, reinforced concrete, hydrostatic 
pressure, etc. He was always a welcome guest. 
He had hunted and fished all his life and we never 

191 



THAT FARM 

tired of hearing the interesting stories of his ex- 
periences. 

"Thirty-odd years ago," he told us one evening, 
"five of us went down into the Indian Nation 
shooting. In the party was the late John W. 
Gates, a good shot and a true sportsman. Al- 
though most of those men have since accumulated 
fortunes, there was none of us to whom even the 
cost of transportation was not a serious considera- 
tion at that time. The luxury of a hired cook was 
not to be thought of, so we drew lots to determine 
which of us should fill that important, but objec- 
tionable, position. The * black bean' fell to me, 
with the understanding, however, that whoever 
criticised the cooking should assume the duties of 
that office himself. For one whole day I struggled 
with the domestic side of camp life. My efforts 
with the tin coffee pot and the frying pan seemed 
to be most satisfactory, for there was not a breath 
of criticism from any one. The birds were plenti- 
ful and the hunting was superb. Around the fire in 
the evening my companions graphically recounted 
the incidents of the day's sport, without a note 
of pity for the cook. I had not gone into the In- 
dian Nation to be a chef, so I made up my mind to 
get rid of the job. 

"The next morning, in mixing the biscuits for 
breakfast, I put a heaping double handful of salt 

192 



THAT FARM 

into the dough. Those ponderous yellow soda bis- 
cuits were a terrible infliction at best, but salted 
as they were for breakfast that morning they would 
evoke criticism from starvation itself. So I folded 
my arms and waited for results. 

*'Three of the men ate sparingly of the biscuits 
in silence. Then Gates came in — he was late for 
breakfast. He hurriedly broke open one of the 
steaming * sinkers/ buttered it thoroughly, then bit 
oflF a generous mouthful. Suddenly he stopped 
chewing, and said *G-r-e-a-t G-o-d, these biscuits 
are salty — but they're good!"' 



193 



CHAPTER XVIII 

IN WHICH I REVIEW THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS 

OF A SUCCESSFUL YEAR, AND APPEND 

A BALANCE SHEET 

BUT for a certain pride that I felt in my new 
• meadows I might pass over that year's 
haying season with only a dollars-and- 
cents mention of it in the annual statement of ac- 
counts, for of all farming operations the story of 
the harvesting of hay is one that gains little in re- 
telling. In extensive farming, however, I know of 
no nicer crop to raise nor one that pays better. I 
had worked my land for several years, tilling, crop- 
ping, and removing surface stones; some of the 
fields had been "wet and sour" and, in the opinion 
of my farmer neighbors, the time and effort I had 
spent upon them were wasted, but the 221 tons of 
hay that we mowed from 105 acres that June was 
another silent but effective argument for and 
against our conflicting ideas regarding agriculture. 
Then, too, "haying time" is the commencement of 
the harvest season, a period of the farmer's year 

194 



THAT FARM 

that may always be written of without danger of 
tiresome repetition, for it marks the beginning of 
dividends from the soil, and dividends are always 
interesting — even in a cloister. 

When the mowing was finished I noticed a dozen 
or more uncut pieces of grass about ten feet in 
diameter, in different parts of the meadows. They 
added nothing to the appearance of the fields and 
might even have conveyed the impression that 
a *'city man" had done the mowing. I asked 
Waters about it, and he told me that every bunch of 
grass contained a quail's nest, and that orders had 
gone forth from the junior member of the firm not 
to disturb them. The love of agriculture was ap- 
parently not the ruling passion on the farm; in 
fact, I had noticed that into the talk of crops and 
pigs and separated milk and poultry little bits of 
shooting conversation would creep here and there, 
and the care of the Irish setters was not neglected 
because of the activity in other branches of the 
business. 

But the hayfields and the kennels and the rest of 
the farm, in fact, were dull and uninteresting com- 
pared with those departments over which Weber 
exercised a most active superintendence. The bord- 
ers of his vegetable garden seemed to mark the 
limitsof his universe, and in it heworked under high 
pressure during every daylight hour of the season. 

195 



THAT FARM 

I should like to write into this short history of 
my farm a fuller account of Its vegetable garden — 
or, perhaps, of its vegetable gardener and his wife 
— of the way they systematize their work and the 
cheerful manner in which they go about it, but 
those things are less interesting when written of 
than when one is brought in daily contact with 
them. I know I am not prejudiced toward any 
people because of the hue of their skin, the land of 
their birth, nor the God they worship, but I must 
confess to a rapidly growing conviction that Ger- 
man gardeners are second to none. It is interest- 
ing and instructive to watch the well-directed 
energy of Weber and his wife. My vegetable gar- 
den has paid because of no other influence than 
their common sense and hustle. 

To any farmer, not too far removed from a mar- 
ket, I say get a good man and raise vegetables — 
you won't regret it. The financial success of a 
vegetable garden depends very largely upon the 
manner in which the produce is ofi^ered to the pub- 
lic. First of all raise good vegetables, display 
them in an attractive way, and you will find that 
the salesman is a third consideration. The prod- 
uce wagon afi^orded Weber a new and better way 
of disposing of the products of his departments, 
and in characteristic fashion he made the best of 
it. The vegetables were put up in the most at- 

196 



THAT FARM 

tractive manner: beets, carrots, parsnips, turnips, 
etc., were washed and tied in bunches, and such 
things as beans, peas, tomatoes, etc., were packed 
in split baskets. Eggs were put up in pasteboard 
cartons holding a dozen each, with the farm name 
printed on the cover. 

We had appealed to our dairy customers for 
patronage by personal canvass and direct adver- 
tising, and the produce was sold principally to 
them. Most of them ran weekly or monthly ac- 
counts, as they did with the milk, but there were 
also a number of cash customers. The day's re- 
ceipts from that market wagon on one occasion 
amounted to $42.75. Waters kept a record of 
everything that went out on the wagon, just as he 
did in the dairy, the drivers were each supplied 
with $5 in cash with which to make change, and 
when the wagons returned from the village the 
money was turned over to Waters and he checked 
up the accounts. Each evening the currency was 
given to me with a statement. 

By way of illustrating the value of utilizing all 
practical sources of income on a farm, I want to 
say a word about my ** borrowed*' thoroughbred 
stallion. There is, of course, a difference of opin- 
ion about the value of crossing this particular 
breed of horse on native work mares for the pur- 
pose of producing a good, serviceable farm horse. 

197 



THAT FARM 

Without caring to invite controversy on the sub- 
ject I must say that from my observations and 
experience I am satisfied that the infusion of thor- 
oughbred blood not only produces a better type of 
horse, but also a vastly superior quality of horse; 
an animal with sufficient weight for all farm pur- 
poses, and possessing more intelligence, stamina, 
and courage than his cold-blooded brother. But I 
meant only to quote from my account books. I 
had made a particular efi'ort to interest my neigh- 
bors in horse breeding and my work had not been 
entirely in vain. My proposition to take wean- 
ling colts at $50 each had not met with much favor 
from the start because few farmers object to "car- 
rying along" a colt or two, and it is no mistake. 
During the breeding season which closed in June, 
sixty-two mares were bred to my horse and, with- 
out exception, a stud fee of $15 was paid for each 
service. Without considering the fact that the 
stallion afforded a splendid riding and driving 
horse, the cost of his keep for a year was $87.50. 
He earned $930 in stud fees. And yet Uncle Tom 
Stevens said to me one day, shortly after I got the 
horse, *^ a stud will never pay around here." 

I think it is a sort of second nature with most of 
us to like animal rather than plant life. The 
average man, whether he be farmer or city slave 
is attracted more by a puppy than a prize pump- 

198 



THAT FARM 

kin, more by a colt than a chrysanthemum. Some- 
how or other after an examination of the growing 
oats or wheat I would generally wind up among 
the chickens or in the cow barn, and an inspection 
of the cornfields, was, as a rule, merely a break in a 
trip to the hog lot. Those 410 pigs interested me 
more than anything else on the farm that year. 
At weekly intervals in the spring we had planted 
four acres in rape, which we cut and fed to the pigs 
up to frost. In addition to the green food they 
were given separated milk into which was mixed a 
little ground rye and some broken crackers. Bi- 
tuminous coal and lime were kept in the field, but 
the hogs seemed to find all the minerals they re- 
quired rooting around in the 40 acres of woodland. 
How those pigs grew there in the woods! It was 
apparently an ideal condition in which to raise 
them, and it did not look as if we would have to 
call upon the Agricultural Department for any 
anti-hog-cholera serum. Still I did not spend any 
hog money in advance. Junior, on the contrary, 
was discounting the future. "Next year," he said, 
"we will have twice as many; pork means profit. 
We can produce a thousand hogs on this farm every 
year just as easily as a hundred." 

I gripped the rail on which we were sitting a 
little tighter — just to shift my position. 

In August my wife and I went to visit friends up 

199 



THAT FARM 

on the St. Lawrence River. We did not go for a 
vacation. For two years, under various pretexts, 
we had managed to avoid the trip, but the invita- 
tion came a third time with renewed urgency, and 
we found it easiest to accept it. We returned in 
September and had missed very little of the farm 
work. When we told our host and hostess that 
business called us back to the farm, they were 
amused, because, as they informed us, farming 
meant to them simply an occupation in which idle- 
ness was cradled. They had never looked upon it 
as a business crowded with important details — 
few people do. 

That fall was the most important period in the 
farm's history. I had worked the place for four 
years — the first year under an overseer, it is true, 
and I count that year lost; the following three 
years, however, I stand sponsor for, ofl^ering ex- 
planations, but not excuses for the errors I have 
made. Since, in most cases, results best tell the 
story of our undertakings, I am going to write only 
of our harvesting, omitting, with regret, many 
happy incidents of our farm life that season, even 
an account of our fall shooting. In three years 
one can, underordinary circumstances, tell whether 
or not he is going to succeed at farming. In that 
time the soil, if properly handled, will yield divi- 
dends on an investment of intelligent work; even 

200 



THAT FARM 

the "worn out" soil will do it, the soil that has 
been abandoned and condemned. 

If at the end of that time, under ordinary cir- 
cumstances, a farm does not pay, or a profitable 
way of working it is not in sight, then a man had 
better lay aside his plow and pocket his loss, for he 
is laboring in the wrong field. Because agriculture 
is a pleasant and lucrative occupation it does not 
necessarily follow that any one can make it so. 
There are vocations in this world for every one of 
us, and sooner or later each finds the sphere for 
which he was begotten. Some must preach the 
Word of Truth and some must push banana carts, 
and to them no alluring voice sings a promise of 
success in the fields; but at the same time there are 
a great many of us intended for farmers who have 
never even seen a plow. 

Here in the country, particularly in the autumn 
season, we who abide in the midst of its glories 
breathe a pitying sigh for our less fortunate brothers 
who spend their lives at the city's wheel of fortune, 
existing and hoping. Of course there are two view- 
points. Those same city brothers do not envy us 
our lot, and to them we are "rubes," "pumpkin- 
tumblers," "hayseeds" — in fact they have us 
classified under a variety of names; but what a 
pity it is that they cannot know our life, if not all of 
it at least our golden autumn — our harvest time. 

20I 



THAT FARM 

In those four years, changes naturally had 
taken place. The soil was doing its work once 
more like a piece of machinery that had been re- 
paired and overhauled; we had learned the differ- 
ent acres and how to handle them advantageously. 
For the time at least we had hit upon a practical 
plan for disposing of our farm products. We were 
doing our own stock breeding, introducing new 
blood, of course, wherever it was needed. In other 
words the business was in practical shape and 
progressing. The experimental work was not ended, 
it never is in any business, but the costly pioneer 
work was about over. 

Another change had taken place, or is about to 
take place, I should say, although I have avoided 
bringing any account of its various stages of devel- 
opment into this brief history of my farm. Ro- 
mances are as a rule as insipid as they are important, 
and even the love aifair of my son and part- 
ner has failed to inspire me to work its silly de- 
tails into an account of farm facts. Junior is to 
be married in the spring. Why it has been de- 
layed so long I do not understand, because he has 
what might be diagnosed as an acute attack. The 
combination of a good-looking, curly-haired girl 
and an erstwhile Princeton tackle can result only 
one way. There is nothing new about it nor in- 
teresting; it is a temporary paradise for those who 

202 



THAT FARM 

find it, and a tolerant world smiles its approval and 
blessing. 

When we began husking corn in October we had 
already harvested 3,520 bushels of oats, 1,580 
bushels of soy beans, 560 bushels of buckwheat, 
385 bushels of wheat, and 873 bushels of potatoes. 
The corn husking was done, as in previous years, 
by outside labor; 8,825 bushels were gathered and 
stored in the cribs. The year had been ideal for 
farming; throughout the growing season weather 
conditions had been excellent and we had good 
crops as a result. Our hogs were the only crop re- 
maining to be disposed of. Hay and grain are 
harvested at certain times each year, they are 
stored in the barns and sold when conditions 
are favorable, but with a crop like pork, which must 
be marketed as soon as it is killed, the butchering 
season is governed largely by the price of pork. It 
is a peculiar thing, but farmers always like to get 
top price for their hogs; every quarter or half cent 
below the highest is counted an actual loss which 
could have been avoided. 

From early autumn Junior had watched the pork 
market very closely. During November dressed 
pork was ten and one half and eleven cents; 
early in December it dropped to ten cents, then 
began to advance steadily until the middle of the 
month when it sold at eleven and one half cents. 

203 



THAT FARM 

The week before Christmas David Knapp and his 
boys with five assistants started in to work on our 
herd. We reserved 50 young sows for breeding 
purposes, and the remaining 360 were butchered; 
they averaged 129 J pounds and we got eleven cents 
a pound for all but 1,000 pounds, which we ground 
into sausage after a recipe which Waters had 
brought with him from Virginia. The year be- 
fore he ha-d made some for our own use and it was 
of such excellent quality that I made up my mind 
then to put it on the market. We packed it in one- 
pound sealed cartons and sold it at twenty cents a 
pound directly to the trade. We had on our 
books 310 customers who bought farm produce 
from our wagons. All the milk they used during 
the year was supplied to them by us, and in addi- 
tion they purchased all the eggs, poultry, and 
vegetables that we produced on the farm. Our 
produce was sold to the consumer below the retail 
market price, but it meant not less than 100 per 
cent, more than we could have gotten at wholesale. 
With the single exception of pork, there was not a 
farm product of ours for which we did not receive 
more than our neighbors got for theirs. For ex- 
ample, we got eight cents a quart for our milk, while 
other farmers got four cents for theirs. Our eggs 
averaged thirty-two cents a dozen as against an 
average wholesale price of twenty cents. The gen- 

204 



THAT FARM 

eral average price received for our vegetables was 
150 per cent, higher than the local wholesale price. 
These figures, I might add, were the result of care- 
fully kept records — they were facts, not guesses. 

One day I was talking with one of our local butch- 
ers about a pair of colts I had for sale. We were 
standing near the entrance to his shop, and while 
we were talking, a farmer was bringing in some to- 
matoes, a. dozen baskets, that he had sold to the 
butcher at 25 cents a basket. Before that farmer 
had carried the last basket from his wagon into the 
shop the butcher's clerk had sold two of them to a 
customer at 75 cents each. 

I said to the butcher, "You are getting a little 
more for your tomatoes than I am. I am selling 
mine at 65 cents a basket." 

But he did not seem at all pleased at the fact 
that he was beating me on prices, because our yel- 
low produce wagon had made his cash register ring 
less often than it did formerly. I was not at all 
popular with the local marketmen when that 
wagon began its trips into the village. They re- 
sorted to any number of primitive little schemes to 
injure my business, but when they realized that the 
wagon was to be a permanent fixture in the town 
their wrath abated somewhat. It is right hard to 
stop the sale of fresh vegetables except by selling 
fresher ones. 

205 



THAT FARM 

In transcribing the records of accounts for the 
year the various items, for the most part, are 
worthy of no particular mention, because they 
differ only in quantity from similar records of pre- 
vious years. I feel, however, that Weber's work 
is entitled to more mention than a mere ledger en- 
try of results. From his garden he marketed 750 
dozen ears of sweet corn, 92 dozen bunches of as- 
paragus, 225 baskets of tomatoes, 2,150 bunches 
of small vegetables, carrots, beets, turnips, etc., 
155 baskets of peppers, 175 baskets of string beans, 
85 bushels sweet potatoes, 192 baskets of peas, 925 
cantaloupes, 75 baskets of lima beans, 65 dozen 
cucumbers, 365 egg plants, 250 dozen heads of 
lettuce, 1,100 heads of cabbage and various other 
things. The total receipts amounted to ^1,445.55. 
In addition to the vegetables that were sold, our 
own table and all the workers on the farm were 
supplied throughout the season from the garden. 
Although no credit was given for these supplies, 
it is, nevertheless, an item that should be taken 
into consideration. There is a certain satisfaction, 
however, in having the farm table supplied from 
the place; to commercialize that feature of the life 
would rob it of one of its principal charms. 

With the other farming operations out of the 
way for the year, the kennel came in for its share of 
attention. After the shooting season was over the 

206 




Seven beautiful puppies — the beginning of the kennel 




*~ir. 



The hog industry is Junior's pet hobby 



THAT FARM 

dogs were shaped up for the winter shows.' We 
had eleven entries in the "puppy," "novice," and 
"open" classes, and during the early winter the 
dogs were carefully prepared for the coming exhi- 
bitions. Our kennel is not one of the farm's best 
money makers, but it is second to none in impor- 
tance, and as show time approaches every one on 
the place is keenly interested in the results. 

At the New York show that year every one 
of our dogs was placed; we won three firsts, four 
seconds and two thirds, besides two specials. 
Champion Lady Rakin, who has always earned 
honor for our kennel in the show ring, has been re- 
tired. Late in November she whelped seven beau- 
tiful puppies, and next year we will have some 
entries for the circuit that will make the best Irish 
setters in the country grip their thrones. And if 
our business lends us the time we intend to be well 
represented in the field trials. 

We operated the mill throughout the fall and 
early winter, grinding and mixing feed, and had no 
difficulty in disposing of all that we could turn out. 
That was the last of the year's farming operations, 
and we closed our books on New Year's Eve. A 
copy of the accounts follows : 

RECEIPTS 

200 tons hay at ^24.25 $ 4,850.00 

1,100 bushels soy beans at ^1.90 per bushel . . 2,090.00 

207 



THAT FARM 



1,500 bushels ground oats at ^30 per ton . 
140 tons oat straw at $15.50 per ton . . 
6,500 bushels corn and cob meal at $28.75 

ton 

3,368 quarts cream at 35 cents per quart . 
45,000 pounds dressed pork at 1 1 cents per lb 
1,000 pounds sausage at 20 cents per lb. . 
350 hog plucks at 40 cents each .... 
5,285 doz. egg at 32 cents per doz. . . . 
1,017 dressed chickens at 60 cents each . 
8,200 bundles fodder at 3 cents per bundle 
1,735 pounds meat at 15 cents per pound 

Garden truck 

Stallion service fees 

600 bushels potatoes at $1 per bu. . . . 
138,700 quarts milk at 8 cents per qt. 



per 



Total 



$ 787.50 
2,170.00 

3,270.31 

1,178.80 

4,950.00 

200.00 

140.00 

1,691.20 

610.20 

246.00 

260.25 

1,445-55 

930.00 

600.00 

11,096.00 

$36,515-81 



EXPENDITURES 

Wages: 4 Russians at $30 per month each . . $ 1,440.00 

I gardener at $20 per month 240.00 

Frank Waters at $50 per month 600.00 

James Dolan at $30 per month 360.00 

Chas. Weber and wife at $40 per month . . 480.00 

Keep of 6 men at $12 per month each .... 864.00 

Fertilizer 965.00 

Husking corn 460.28 

Butchering 360 hogs at 50 cents each .... 180.00 

22 tons hog feed at $14.25 per ton 313-50 

I steam driven tubular cream separator . , . 182.50 

I delivery automobile 575 . 00 

208 



THAT FARM 

1 silo $ 515.00 

Filling silo 170.00 

2 sets farm harness at ^48 96.00 

33,680 quarts milk (for separating) at 4 cts. a qt. 1,347,20 

Dairy incidentals 94-25 

Other incidentals 215.65 

Taxes 250. cxD 

Insurance 355 00 

James Dolan's commission, 5 per cent. . . . 554 80 

Charles Weber's commission, 5 per cent. . . . ^^7-3S 
Depreciation 10 per cent, on ^12,558.50 live 

stock and equipment 1,255.85 

Interest 5 per cent, on investment, ^28,250 . . 1,412.50 
Frank Waters's commission, 5 per cent. . . 1,142.89 

Total ^14,256.77 

Net profit $22,259.04 

There is no entry In the foregoing statement 
covering the disposition of calves; some of them 
were killed and consumed on the farm, and the 
others were turned over to the local butchers in 
exchange for other meats. The item of 1,735 
pounds of meat covers part of those transactions. 

A heavy snow had fallen during Christmas week 
and on New Year's night Junior, wrapped in a 
coon-skin coat, drove off in a sleigh to go "visiting." 
When I was his age I was bill clerk in a St. Louis 
dry-goods house — my salary was ^18 a week. 



209 



CHAPTER XIX 

IN WHICH I TAKE STOCK OF MY FAILURES AND 
SUCCESSES, AND ARRIVE AT A FEW CON- 
CLUSIONS ON BUSINESS FARMING 

IT IS springtime again as I write the concluding 
chapters of the early history of my farm. I am 
younger than when I first saw its weedy acres, 
several years ago, from the rear seat of a country 
real estate man's surrey, although my hair is a 
shade lighter (but that is only sun bleach, I am 
sure). From where I sit I can look out in three 
directions over my farm. It is no lonely wilder- 
ness, naked of opportunity, where bent-backed 
toilers labor from dark to dark, nor is it a sylvan 
nook inhabited by frolic fairies; it is a prospering 
commercial industry set in the midst of every com- 
fort and luxury. Machinery has taken most of 
the backache out of labor, and the toilers manage 
to find time to keep posted on "batting averages" 
and ** white hopes." Frolic fairies there may be 
over in the forty acres of woodland, but they don't 
seem to interfere with the pigs any. 

2IO 



TPIAT FARM 

Still we are not blind to the beautiful in nature 
because we see it from a commercial standpoint. 
To me the ** fragrant apple blossoms" (if they are 
on a healthy tree) are really more fragrant because 
I see in them the promise of prime fruit: the^'golden 
corn" is just as golden, although I estimate the 
yield per acre; the charm of the "gentle cow" is to 
me in her dairy lines; the song of the birds, and the 
violet and gold of the sunset lose none of their 
sweetness or beauty because they come to me while 
I am planting potatoes or feeding pigs. 

Out to the north, where not so very long ago 
untrimmed trees struggled in a tangle of neglect 
within the tumbled down confines of James Bell- 
air's home acre, there stretches a flower garden 
that an ex-dry-goods man's wife has made to bloom 
like one of those bits of fairyland on the banks of 
the Yangtze-Kiang. Across the road to the west 
three gang plows have started in on the season's 
work, and out through the south window I can see 
the cattle — there are sixty-odd of them now — 
in the pasture lot that lies beside the cluster of 
farm buildings. 

It was no accident of fate that brought me to the 
country, no desire to ride a malformed hobby, nor 
an effort to save, if possible, the frayed end of an 
overworn life. I had spent, 'tis true, much of 
my life in the commercial world, but fortune had 

211 



THAT FARM 

been kind to me and those years had not been lean 
ones. If dollars mean success, then I had found it 
in a modest way; but in the accumulation of them 
there was none of the real gratification and happi- 
ness that comes with the fulfilment of one's true 
mission on earth. I had commenced working at a 
time in life when ordinarily a boy lays a foundation 
of happy memories that in later years he rests his 
tired brain among. A great part of my youth was 
spent piloting a pen, and if there was anything ro- 
mantic in the duties of a bill clerk I never learned 
it. Still I was an active man when I left one of 
the busiest cities in the world and came to the coun- 
try; I came because I believed the fullest reward 
for eflPort lay in the fields rather than in the shops. 

Temperamentally I have always been a coun- 
tryman because I like the dimensions of the life. 
Congestion has always been my pet aversion. 
The crowds that jostled me as a boy outside of 
Dan Rice's old one-ring circus tent, and made me 
spill half my pink lemonade, left a deeper impres- 
sion on my mind than the wonderful feats of the 
performers inside. The electric lighted skyscra- 
pers of civilization, between whose eaves the sun- 
shine occasionally finds its way to the street, are to 
me like tombstones over wasted lives. 

Commercially I have been a farmer since I first 
began to study the problem of supply and demand. 

212 



THAT FARM 

Where is there another occupation so independent 
of society and upon which society is so dependent? 
The city merchant produces nothing, and, labor as 
he will, his reward is measured by other hands — and 
competition; while the farmer, on the other hand, 
furnishes power for the commercial world. Agri- 
culture is the backbone of the country's prosperity 
and where it does not now receive first consid- 
eration in the affairs of the nation, it must event- 
ually. The factory is because of the farm; the 
factoryman looks to the farmer, but the farmer is 
dependent upon no one — he is his own master. 

The practicability of farming had appealed to 
me for a long time before I finally closed my city 
desk and came to the country. I had no practical 
knowledge of farming when I started, and he who 
in his ignorance insists that it is the first essential to 
success, needs only the elongated ears to completely 
establish his identity. I did, however, bring with 
me some theories that I had learned from years of 
study. I knew more than the average man, per- 
haps, about live stock and crops and the soil that 
grows them, but I learned it from the pages of 
books that were written for the guidance of farmers 
— written by those who have studied and devel- 
oped correct methods after having learned the 
wrong ones. I found, to begin with, that the farm- 
ing business, like any other, succeeds best when 

213 



THAT FARM 

personally conducted; every detail of it is impor- 
tant and must receive constant, close attention. 
The soil is a wonderfully reciprocative thing, but 
It has no brains; it cannot think for itself; it must 
be carefully handled; and in order to do that, one 
must have intelligent, contented help. 

Perhaps I have written too much, in the opinion 
of some, about the workers on my farm, but those 
who have had experience with the labor question 
in the country can appreciate the tremendous value 
of the cooperation of reliable assistants. When I 
took up the business of farming I had no idea of 
following too closely in beaten paths; I intended 
to, and have taken little excursions off to the side, 
some of them at very abrupt angles; where they 
have been successful it has been due in a great 
measure to the men who have worked with me, and 
our failures have been caused by no lack of effort 
or interest on any one's part. Are not such men 
entitled to an interest in my business .^^ My profit- 
sharing plan has been condemned by some, but 
without it I would not have efficient labor, and 
without efficient labor I would not have my farm. 

In a city business enterprise the faithful keeper 
of the books, the trustworthy cashier, the able 
salesman, all are valuable assets of the business, 
and the guiding minds of the institution prize those 
competent helpers that are so essential to success. 

214 



THAT FARM 

They reward them for their services with annual 
increases in salary and additional gifts of money at 
Christmas or New Year's time. Why should I not 
try to deal in a similar way with the men who have 
helped me hew facts out of theories? The con- 
stant efficient superintendence of Frank Waters, 
the thrift and energy of Charles Weber, and the 
untiring, well-directed activity of James Dolan 
have enabled me to do in fact what I had only 
accomplished in more or less correct theories. 

I have worked to bring my land up to a high 
state of productiveness, for, needless to say, that 
is the purpose of a business farm. There Is no 
more sense in undertaking to farm successfully on 
poor land than there would be to try to win a Van- 
derbilt Cup race with a machine running on one 
cylinder. 

There are very few available farms In the East 
to-day that are In a profitably productive condition, 
and In going into the country one can count on 
meeting this difficulty. But during the time re- 
quired for the amelioration of the soil a farm can 
be made to pay if one will exercise some care in its 
management; for crops can be raised from the very 
start, even though they are not ** bumper" crops. 

Like almost every other farmer, I had an insuffi- 
cient supply of natural manure at hand to nourish 
the soil properly, so I resorted to artificial fertlll- 

215 



THAT FARM 

zers. Although I am not a chemist, I have found 
the chemistry of the soil a most interesting and 
profitable study. Through the medium of analyses 
I have come to know every acre of my farm, and 
in most instances I have been able to get better 
results from the use of chemicals than I could 
have gotten from any natural manure, and in much 
shorter time. One's brain need not have been 
hothoused for decades in a college or laboratory to 
enable it to appreciate the fact that different plants 
require for their proper development certain chem- 
ical foods at different periods of their growth. 
Analyses of the soil and fertilizing instructions may 
be had for the cost of the postage that is required 
to carry the request to the State experiment sta- 
tion. And from experience I have found out the 
truth and value of another lesson that I learned 
before I owned an acre of farm land — that is, 
tillage. I believe that deep, thorough cultivation 
of the soil is as important as fertilization. 

Because a farm has been brought up to a high 
state of productiveness it does not necessarily 
follow that it is a financial success, although in 
most instances such is the case. The money profit 
in farming depends entirely upon the manner in 
which crops are disposed of; we can learn from 
others how to till and sow and harvest properly, 
but in the matter of selling crops most advanta- 

216 



THAT FARM 

geously one must be his own master and pupil. 
The best crops to raise depend upon the neighbor- 
hood in which one is located, and the best way of 
selling them rests with the man who produces them. 
By selling my milk at retail I get loo per cent, 
more for it than my neighbor gets for his; some 
waxed paper, a pasteboard carton, and a sausage 
mill enable me to get nearly lOO per cent, more for 
my hog than I would otherwise receive; I have 
trebled the revenue from my market garden by the 
use of a retail vegetable wagon; by grinding and 
mixing my grain I have added from lo to 25 per 
cent, to its value. I have free water power, I will 
admit, but the same practice could be profitably 
carried on with a steam or gasolene engine. If the 
average farmer would buy an engine and a grinding 
mill he would derive excellent interest from his in- 
vestment each year in the work he could do on his 
own farm alone. But a great many farmers seem 
opposed to improved machinery. They laughed 
at my sulky cultivators, and said I could not work 
gang plows in my fields. When I planted my corn 
by machinery instead of cross marking the fields 
and sowing the grain by hand, they told me that 
the weeds would come up in the rows and choke 
the corn. And Uncle Tom Stevens bids fair to go 
to his grave unreconciled to my corn harvester. 
None of the devices that I used were inventions 

217 



THAT FARM 

of my own, nor were my farm practices anything 
but creations of other minds. They had proven 
practical when used by others, so it was only natu- 
ral that I should adopt them. My attempts at 
scientific farming are very amateurish compared 
with the methods practised in some other localities, 
but here where I am they seem very advanced. 
The guiding hand that led me into the country 
brought me into the midst of a people who hold to 
ancient farming methods with a strange, inexplic- 
able stubbornness that shuts out advancement and 
prosperity. 

In the matter of feeding my stock, I have tried 
to exercise the greatest care and economy, keeping 
in mind at all times the welfare of the animals. It 
is surprising how rapidly profits can disappear 
through a manger; and as a rule, where there is 
negligence in feeding, the animal suffers as well as 
your purse. We make it a practice to feed corn 
fodder instead of hay; the nutritive value, I judge 
from results, is about the same, but the market 
value is tremendously different. By feeding fod- 
der I can winter a colt, for example, at a cost (for 
forage) of ^10.80, while the cost of timothy hay for 
the same period of six months would be about ^28. 
All of our horse and cattle feed is ground before- 
hand; it is a practice that pays well for the work 
that it requires. With a cream separator we are 

218 



THAT FARM 

able to get, for almost nothing, the greater part of 
the food required by our hogs. 

Soiling is a practice that we have found to be 
most beneficial to our cattle and profitable to our- 
selves, and I am going to stick to it until I learn of 
some more practical plan for feeding my stock. It 
enables a man to exercise the care that is so neces- 
sary in the proper maintenance of a dairy herd. A 
cow is a perfect manufacturing machine, and the 
finished article that she yields in the milk pail de- 
pends almost entirely upon the raw material that 
is fed to her and the manner in which it is given. 
It requires an acre of good pasture land to support 
one cow during the grazing season; in most instan- 
ces two acres are hardly sufficient. If that one 
acre were planted in soiling crops it would supply 
feed enough for ten cows, and they would not be 
subjected to the heat and flies while they were 
eating. 

Another thing that I have found indispensable 
on a farm, or, more correctly speaking, three other 
things, are the Day Book, Cash Book, and Ledger. 
Not only a general record of the business should be 
kept in them, but separate accounts of each de- 
partment. Every possible source of revenue on a 
farm should be encouraged and developed, but 
none should be made to support another. No city 
merchant would continue an unprofitable depart- 

219 



THAT FARM 

ment of his business, but nine farmers in ten will 
do it. Where those books are not kept there you 
will find an absence of management, and where 
business management does not exist failure thrives. 
Keep a record of accounts even if it is in the back 
of the almanac that hangs by the kitchen clock, 
but keep it and study it, and almost unconsciously 
you will begin to weed out expenditures and culti- 
vate receipts. 

The horse breeding feature of our business is of 
no little importance, and some day I am going into 
it more extensively. Bred as our colts are they 
should develop into good cross-country or farm 
horses, and both types are as much in demand to- 
day as they were before the automobile was in- 
vented. Next year we will begin handling the 
colts that give any promise as hunters, and if they 
show quality, as they no doubt will, they can be 
readily disposed of at good prices as four-year-olds. 
The remaining ones can be sold as unbroken three- 
year-olds at a figure that pays well for producing 
them. It is a common belief with many people 
that a three-year-old colt cannot be put upon the 
market at a profit. Even when the colt sells for 
a good price, they argue that the cost of producing 
him is so great that the difference in price does not 
justify the time and money spent upon him. As a 
matter of fact, where we feed them for nearly six 

220 



THAT FARM 

months In the year the annual cost of their keep is 
a little less than $20 each. 

This coming year we are going to have some 
turkeys to market. The young birds we hatched 
last season have developed into a splendid flock 
of fifty. We shall follow old Mr. Gaines's direc- 
tions religiously, and if we share the success that 
he enjoys we will have another item of income to 
add to the farm's credit at the end of the year. 
Weber has thirty-five eggs which he has collected 
from the different nests during the past few days. 

The greatest mistake that I made when I began 
farming was not planting an orchard. In the 
development of other things I neglected that 
highly profitable feature of farming. If I were 
starting in again I would put out my orchard first 
and develop the rest of the farm afterward. In 
going into farming a man of my age generally fails 
to appreciate the value of an orchard for the reason 
that a few years are required for its development, 
and that period of apparent inactivity causes him 
to devote his time to crops that mature more 
quickly. He does not realize that there are few 
better things to leave after him than a good orchard. 
And there is no department of agriculture more 
interesting and satisfactory than fruit growing. 
But I am negotiating now for 300 acres of land 
that adjoin my farm on the east. When I get it I 

221 



THAT FARM 

am going to put out peach and apple trees on lOO 
acres; the remaining 200 acres will, no doubt, be 
used by Junior in the expansion of his pet hobby — 
the hog industry. When they are not on the same 
ground both pay very well, so the 300 acres will be 
turned to good account. 

Another branch of farming that Is going to be 
extensively practised here in the East before long 
is the raising of beef cattle. There are thousands 
of acres of land beautifully adapted to the purpose 
and they can be bought at a price that will enable 
a man to carry on the business very profitably. 
The country needs more beef, and our Eastern 
land needs the cattle. Sooner or later we are 
bound to bring these together. 

Eight miles from my farm there is a place of 
1,200 acres that was bought some years ago by an 
actor, a very prominent man in his profession, by 
the way, who put in some extensive high-priced 
improvements on the property. Those who pro- 
fess to know say he spent $50,000 on the residence 
and outbuildings, but unless I am a poor judge In 
matters of that kind, twice that amount would 
hardly cover the cost of the improvements that I 
looked over the day I went to see the property. 
Of course the farm is rocky; it is in the hills, and 
perhaps not more than 200 acres of it could be 
worked with machinery, but there is plenty of grass 

222 



THAT FARM 

on It, better by far than on some of the grazing 
land out in the Western cattle country, and there 
is water everywhere. That place is begging a pur- 
chaser to-day at ^18,000. The actor man who 
owned it lost all he had three or four years ago (it 
was all in the papers at the time), and a land shark 
in our town got hold of the place; he is offering it 
for sale at that price, so there is no telling what the 
poor actor got for it. 

But just imagine such a thing. Less than five 
miles from a depot on one of the best railroads in 
the country, within sixty miles of New York City, 
and at $15 an acre! To earn 6 per cent, on that 
price would mean 90 cents annually per acre. A 
steer turned out to graze would earn seven times 
that much in one season, and all the work attached 
to it would be turning him into the pasture and 
taking him out again. We won't have the sombre- 
roed cow-puncher of the plains, and his roman- 
tic lawlessness, but we are going to have some 
practical cattlemen carrying on their business 
"close t' home" before long. Wait and see. 

But of all the branches of my farm, each contrib- 
uting as it does to the general welfare of theenter- 
prisCjthe one that has always given me most pleasure 
is my dairy. The cattle are a never-ending 
source of interest to me. I know each individual 
cow, her disposition and her record, and hardly a 

223 



THAT FARM 

day passes that I do not carefully look over the 
milk sheets. I like to go into the barn, particu- 
larly during the winter time, just to fuss and play 
with them. Down between the rows of stanchions 
I go and slip them little bits of something extra 
here and there, and it is surprising how they look 
for my visits. There is one heifer in particular 
that was out of sorts for a long time; we doctored 
her and tickled her appetite for many weeks with 
delicacies that were not on the regular dairy bill of 
fare, and now she is terribly spoiled. Unless I go 
to her first, in my visits to the barn, she shakes her 
head and jumps up and down in the stanchion until 
the whole herd becomes restless. 

But I suppose I like them so much because they 
are constantly working. One must be contented 
with an annual crop of hay or grain, but the dairy 
cow pays her dividends twice a day. As a business 
proposition how can she fail to appeal to any one, 
for she returns each year about four times the 
amount of money spent upon her. There is an 
army of admirers ready always to sing the praises 
of each breed, but in my opinion the ideal dairy 
cow is the Guernsey; the breed has served me well. 



224 



CHAPTER XX 

IN WHICH I LIGHT A CIGAR ON THE VERANDA 
AND PHILOSOPHIZE 

THUS have I sought to summarize the com- 
mercial side of the life I have chosen in 
which to spend my later years. Each 
feature of it is a separate and distinct enterprise 
filled with the most interesting details. Active 
and ever changing, it lacks the monotonous routine 
of so many other occupations. To produce a 
better cow, or raise a better chicken, or increase 
the yield of corn, all hold a particular charm for 
me which I never felt when I tried to sell more 
linen or lingerie. 

I have prospered in this life, perhaps to some ex- 
tent because the love I had for it and the confidence 
I felt in its possibilities leveled many of the obsta- 
cles that obstruct the way to success. Out of the 
relic of James Bellair's farm we have built a pros- 
perous business. It has been a satisfaction to me 
to learn by actual experience that most of the 
theories which I adopted in the days of my library 

225 



THAT FARM 

farming, and which have been so bitterly assailed 
by those who refuse to learn them, are in reality 
the basic principles of successful agriculture. 

My original purpose in coming to the country 
was to find a congenial home for my four boys. I 
would have liked to see all of them face the future 
from the security of a well-conducted farm, but I 
feel no regret because three of them have elected 
otherwise, although I question their business judg- 
ment. I have, at least, been instrumental in start- 
ing one of my sons in a scheme of life that is not 
without a bright coloring of opportunity. I have 
had some experience in the commercial world; for 
nearly forty years I followed the hazardous course 
of a business career in the city. In that time I 
turned a great many sharp corners and left fur on 
most of them, so I feel that I have performed no 
mean parental kindness In directing a son along 
another and a better way to journey through life. 

There were some unpleasant Incidents in my 
"early career" as a farmer — little experiences 
that a man of my age tries to avoid — but they 
seem to have worked themselves into adjustment 
in the regular course of events. Even old Blake, 
the bank president, never misses an opportunity 
to stop and chat with me, although I must admit 
that my attention is generally divided between his 
strange sharp eyes and his inseparable diamond 

226 



THAT FARM 

shirt stud. On the other hand I profited by the 
philosophy of old Layton Davidson, and such men 
as Uncle Tom Stevens I am proud to have as 
neighbors. Frequently when I can spare the 
time I drive over to Uncle Tom's for the purpose 
of drawing on his store of quaint knowledge. When 
he comes to visit me we smoke a cigar or two and 
perhaps I may tell him of the years I spent swap- 
ping millinery and hosiery and dress-goods for a 
living. But I have never been able to get him to 
endorse my way of farming. 

I am no sentimentalist; I have tried to make It 
clear that I look upon my farm as a business and 
as such I derive my satisfaction from It. But I 
would be hardly human, certainly not quite candid, 
if I did not admit that the calm hills about us and 
the peace of sunny fields had wrought their spell 
upon me. And I fear my wife's fond heart would 
break if she were obliged to leave It all now. Yes, 
there Is something to It besides the business aspect^ 
and perhaps I am old enough to be allowed to 
acknowledge It. 

The Independence of the farmer is one of the 
things that has always appealed to me. To be 
sure, by dint of hard work I had achieved some 
measure of Independence In the dry-goods business. 
I had become my own boss, and no combination 
or trust had risen in my line to rob me of the fruits 

227 



THAT FARM 

of my Individual effort. But never till I lived my 
life and conducted my business on my own acres 
did I truly comprehend the full meaning of inde- 
pendence. 

Perhaps it is the realization that I am passing 
middle life that drives this home to me. I have 
friends — contemporaries — who are this day 
worrying about the future — men who have la- 
bored all their lives for another, who have never 
been their own masters, and whose very existence 
depends upon a wage. Thank God, I have my 
farm, and am spared the bitterness of want in my 
declining years. Though all the cows and hogs 
may die, and the corn wither in my fields, there is 
still a roof for our heads, and enough will always 
grow to feed us. 

Above all else, in the atmosphere of business 
farming we have made a home for ourselves here 
in the hills, a home such as few can boast of. Not 
a temporary anchorage susceptible to the whims 
of fortune, but a home where one can stand on the 
honest ground and the very atmosphere is filled 
with the sweet music of the name. Surrounded 
by all the blessings that one could wish for, we have 
found contentment, and at a time in our lives 
when we can best appreciate and enjoy it. 

Time works a wonderful influence over us, and 
in the even balance of our mature years we weigh 

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THAT FARM 

events otherwise than we did when youth's spon- 
taneous enthusiasms and prejudices dragged us 
hurriedly along through experience. In the com- 
fortable quiet of a spring evening on the veranda 
of a country house, the lazy curling cigar smoke no 
longer shapes Itself Into fantastic dreams of the fu- 
ture around the head of a man who Is sixty-five, 
and who has been In the dry-goods business; he 
rather looks upon It as an effective defence against 
the Intrusion of an occasional mosquito. If by 
chance the Imagination should be affected, the 
smoke pictures would probably be of the approach- 
ing season's pig crop or corn yield. Perhaps If I 
were not so busy with the Impending farm work 
there might creep Into my vision some of the dull 
hues of twilight, and the "lengthening shadows" 
of the hope-poor sentimentalist might rob my fu- 
ture plans of their brightness, but out of this new 
life In the fields there has been born to me a boyish 
enthusiasm that holds scant respect for the "des- 
tiny that shapes our ends." 

I am too old to snap hastily at conclusions, and 
young enough not to be discouraged by the effort 
that is the father of every legitimate success. I 
know what It means to struggle for a livelihood, 
and since I came Into the country I have learned 
what it is to succeed. Those who persist in moan- 
ing a constant criticism against the farm, like the 

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THAT FARM 

critics of other things, are the children of Ignorance 
or inexperience to whom there is no note of glad- 
ness, except the echo of their own wail. To tell them 
of the wealth of the fields would be folly, but the 
workers of the world will find a rich harvest of life's 
good things In agriculture. 

When the music of the metropolis begins to grate 
on you, city brother, and the glittering lights of the 
avenue look like signals In a tunnel, do not think 
that hope has been scuttled, nor that life Is a joke 
or a tragedy. Come where the sunshine will 
bleach despondency and cynicism out of your heart 
— come through the open gateway of That Farm 
into the promised land. 



THE END 



THE COUNTRY LITE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK 



